Genome-resolved metagenomic survey of 500 samples from 56 hot springs across the Western US

Hot springs are natural laboratories for studying microbial diversity, evolution, and adaptation to extreme environments. Despite their abundance across the Western US, information about the functional and genomic structure of inhabiting microbial communities is restricted to a handful of locations. Here we present a dataset of 500 deep metagenomes, totaling 3.38 terabasepairs and collected from 56 remote hot springs across the US Great Basin and Yellowstone, with 25 of the hot springs surveyed annually over 4 consecutive years. Additionally, we present 780 bacterial and archaeal metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) binned from these metagenomes, with completeness ≥80% and contamination ≤5%, of which 149 are considered "high quality". Many of the MAGs likely represent entirely novel genera and even families, relative to the Genome Taxonomy Database. Our spatiotemporally extensive dataset yields insight into the microbial functional structure at dozens of previously unstudied locations, substantially expands our repertoire of extremophile microbial genomes, provides a new resource for high-temperature biotechnology, and enables future phylogenomic studies of these communities through space and time.

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Publication Details

Journal
Scientific Data
Published
2026-04-01
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/s41597-026-07139-w
Primary Topic
Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

Genome-resolved metagenomic survey of 500 samples from 56 hot springs across the Western US

Qusheng Jin, Stilianos Louca, Robert Porch, Sophia Lambert et al.
Scientific Data
Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
article

Genome-resolved metagenomic survey of 500 samples from 56 hot springs across the Western US

Qusheng Jin, Stilianos Louca, Robert Porch, Sophia Lambert, Ines G. Moran, Sage Albright, Hengameh H. Soufi, Masha V. Korchagina, Claire E. Mullin, Alexandria S. Doran, Leila M. Jones, A. Michelle Wood, Nathan Malamud
article en

Abstract

Hot springs are natural laboratories for studying microbial diversity, evolution, and adaptation to extreme environments. Despite their abundance across the Western US, information about the functional and genomic structure of inhabiting microbial communities is restricted to a handful of locations. Here we present a dataset of 500 deep metagenomes, totaling 3.38 terabasepairs and collected from 56 remote hot springs across the US Great Basin and Yellowstone, with 25 of the hot springs surveyed annually over 4 consecutive years. Additionally, we present 780 bacterial and archaeal metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs) binned from these metagenomes, with completeness ≥80% and contamination ≤5%, of which 149 are considered "high quality". Many of the MAGs likely represent entirely novel genera and even families, relative to the Genome Taxonomy Database. Our spatiotemporally extensive dataset yields insight into the microbial functional structure at dozens of previously unstudied locations, substantially expands our repertoire of extremophile microbial genomes, provides a new resource for high-temperature biotechnology, and enables future phylogenomic studies of these communities through space and time.

Scientific Data
University of Kentucky (US), University of Oregon (US), Interacoustics (Denmark) (DK)
National Science Foundation
Openalex Percentile: Top 30%
Microbial Community Ecology and Physiology
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