Shotgun metagenomic sequencing of microbial communities from serpentine and adjacent non-serpentine soils in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa

This BioProject contains shotgun metagenomic sequencing data generated from microbial communities associated with serpentine and adjacent non-serpentine soils in the Barberton Greenstone Belt, South Africa. Biological soil crust samples were collected from paired serpentine and non-serpentine sites to characterise community-level genomic content across contrasting soil chemistries. Shotgun metagenomic sequencing was performed on previously extracted DNA. Sequencing was conducted by NovogeneAIT Genomics (Singapore) using the Illumina NovaSeq 6000 platform. Libraries were prepared with an average insert size of approximately 350 bp and sequenced using a paired-end 2 x 150 bp strategy. To capture the expected complexity of biocrust-associated microbial communities, each sample was sequenced to an approximate depth of 12 Gbp. Initial quality control was performed by the sequencing provider, and reads with base quality scores < 20 were removed prior to data delivery.