NCBI accession metadata for microbial community responses to bacterial extracellular vesicles in the Sargasso Sea, collected on R/V Atlantic Explorer cruises AE2412 and AE2427 in Apr and Nov 2024

This experiment details changes in marine microbial community composition in response to different carbon sources. To determine whether marine microbes can utilize bacterial extracellular vesicles as a carbon source, we conducted bottle incubations in the Sargasso Sea onboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer kept in a flow-through system. Surface seawater samples were supplemented with either buffer (control), glucose, or extracellular vesicles purified from the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus or the heterotroph Alteromonas.

Community samples were collected over a period of four days aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer, during cruises AE2412 and AE2427 in April and November 2024. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing (targeting the V4-V5 region) was carried out to enable analysis of changes in the community. This dataset provides the NCBI/SRA accession metadata associated with this 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing.

These data will be useful in understanding how bacterial extracellular vesicles - numerically abundant nanoscale structures released by all cells - function as a component of marine dissolved organic carbon pools. Samples were collected by Samantha Silvestri, Dr. Ashley Stein, Christian Nielsen, and Caroline Jongbloed of Wellesley College; and Dr. Krista Longnecker of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.