Microbial mats and sediments from Atacama. hypersaline lake metagenome

Atacama region in Chile is one of the most arid locations in the world. Extreme conditions in the area include: high UV irradiation, hypersalinity, drastic temperature changes, and desiccation. Hypersaline lakes can be found in this environment, and therein, bacterial communities thrive, forming different structures and colonizing varied niches. Given that the conditions in the lakes have important seasonal changes, including mainly temperature and dissecation, it is interesting to study the composition and evolution of these communities, and also its influence in the biogeochemical setting. In this dataset of bacterial diversity assessed by pyrosequencing V4 region of 16S rRNA gene, microbial mats and sediments from several lakes in Atacama region in Chile, including Coposa, Pucsa, Llamara, and Cejar, were analyzed.