Raw 16S amplicon reads used in the manuscript entitled: "Impacts of sample handling and storage conditions on archiving physiologically active soil microbial communities"

Soil microbial communities are fundamental to ecosystem processes and plant growth, yet, community composition is seasonally and successionally dynamic, which interferes with long-term iterative experimentation of plant-microbe interactions. We explore how soil sample handling (e.g., filtering) and sample storage conditions impact the ability to revive the original, physiologically active, soil microbial community. We obtained soil from agricultural fields in Montana and Oklahoma, USA and samples were sieved to 2mm or filtered to 45µm. Sieved and filtered soil samples were archived at -20C or -80C for 50 days and revived for 2 or 7 days. We extracted DNA and the more transient RNA pools from control and treatment samples and characterized microbial communities using 16S amplicon sequencing. Filtration and storage treatments significantly altered soil microbial communities, impacting both species richness and community composition. Storing sieved soil at -20C did not alter species richness and resulted in the least disruption to the microbial community composition in comparison to non-archived controls as characterized by RNA pools from soils of both sites. Filtration significantly altered composition but not species richness, although filtered treatments had lower mean richness. Archiving sieved soil at -20C could allow for long-term and repeated experimentation on preserved physiologically active microbial communities.