Metagenomic Studies of Deep-sea hydrothermal vent associated microbial community. Deep-sea hydrothermal vent associated microbial community

The taxonomic diversity and function of microbiomes in deep-sea hydrothermal chimneys are not well understood. In the present study, we generate 170 Gb of metagenomic data of 19 microbial communities residing in hydrothermal chimneys in the Southwest Indian Ridge, theSouth-Mid Atlantic Ridge, and the Juan De Fuca Ridge. In total 490,496 16S rRNA gene reads were extracted for taxonomic analyses, resulting in 31,116 operational taxonomic units. The five most abundant microbial groups were found to be Gammaproteobacteria, Deltaproteobacteria, Parcubacteria, Bacteroidetes, and Alphaproteobacteria, accounting for over 75% of the 16S rRNA gene sequences in the metagenomes. A total of 12 million protein-coding genes were predicted, which were classified into 24 categories dominated by “replication, recombination and repair”, “amino acid transport and metabolism”, and “energy production and conversion”. These datasets provide new insights into microbial taxa and genes in hydrothermal chimneys and allow subsequently comparison with microbiomes from other habitats.