Project name: hypersaline lake metagenome

Description: Deep-sea hypersaline anoxic lake (DHAL) Thetis at location 34.6698°N and 13 22.1455°E - brine sample. pMediterranean deep-sea hypersaline lakes (DHALs) are characterized by extreme salinity and redox gradients, and are inhabitated by vertically stratified microbial communities with lots of species from so far almost unknown taxonomic lineages. Lake Thetis is a new thalassohaline DHAL located SE of the Medriff corridor which is among the saltiest water bodies on the Earth. Direct sequencing of community DNA was done at two different depths, within the extremely saline anoxic brine itself, and at the still oxic interface layer between the brine and the seawater. This Thetis study provided taxonomic and metabolic insight into the microbial communities inhabiting the brine and interface compartments of this deep halophilic anoxic lake.pTotal microbial community DNA was extracted from the upper interface and brine samples of the Thetis deep-sea hypersaline anoxic basin and directly pyrosequenced and assembled. Gene prediction was carried out by a combination of MetaGene (Noguchi et al., 2006) and a brute-force prediction for ORFs exceeding 150 bp in the intergenic regions and ends of the assemblies in order to find incomplete or overlooked genes. As a result, the dataset contains a very complete set of minable coding sequences as well as a substantial overprediction of spurious short and partial genes. Annotation was performed with a modified GenDB v2.2.1 system (Meyer et al., 2003) in combination with an anutomatic annotation algorithm (MicHanThi, 2006). Respective annotations are included in the submission.

Data type: Genome sequencing and assembly

Sample scope: Environment

Release date: 2011-10-31

Last updated: 2011-06-10