A dataset of micro biodiversity in benthic sediment at a global scale.

Microorganisms, occupying the largest biomass in deep sea, play essential roles in deep-sea ecosystem. It is believed that the microbes in deep-sea sediments are more representative of deep-sea microbial communities, the microbial composition of which is seldom affected by ocean currents. However, the community of benthic microbes on a global scale has not been adequately explored. Herein, we build a comprehensive global dataset determined by 16S rRNA gene sequencing to characterize the biodiversity of microorganisms in benthic sediment. The dataset comprised 212 records from 106 sites, included sequencing of bacteria and archaea for each site and yielded 4,766,502 and 1,562,989 reads, respectively. Through annotation, a total of 110,073 and 15,795 OTUs of bacteria and archaea were obtained, and 61 bacterial phyla and 15 archaeal phyla were identified, of which the dominant phyla were Proteobacteria and Thaumarchaeota in deep-sea sediment. Therefore, our findings provided a biodiversity data of microbial communities in deep-sea sediment at global-scale and laid a foundation to further reveal the structures of microorganism communities in deep sea.