Microbialite and microbial mats systems in lagoons, salt flats and Volcanoes of Andean South America Altiplane

High Andean Mountain lakes are a unique extreme environment all over the world since their locations are in high altitude saline deserts, largely influenced by volcanic activity. UV radiation, arsenic content, high salinity, and low dissolved oxygen content, together with extreme daily temperature fluctuations and oligotrophic conditions, shape up an environment that recreates the early earth and, even more, the extraterrestrial conditions. The discovery of living microbialites and microbial mats in 2009 has increased the interest in this area as an early earth counterpart. Since then, and up to now, we have started a prospection for this kind of environments in Argentina, Chile and Bolivia. In this study, we report our metagenomic WGS results from several of these unique environments