Illumina Seq of soil samples from the Sor Rondane Mountains (Antarctica)
PCRs targeting the V1-V3 hypervariable regions of the 16S rRNA gene were performed using the general forward pA and reverse BKL1 primers. PCR duplicates for each sample were pooled and subsequently purified with Agencourt AMPure XP beads (Beckman Coulter Inc.). Twelve to sixteen-cycle (depending on the amount of DNA) index PCRs using Nextera XT (Illumina Inc.) barcodes were performed as described in the Illumina 16S rRNA metagenomics library prep guide. The library prep was again purified using AMPure Beads XP (Beckman Coulter Inc.) as above. Amplicon libraries were sequenced on an Illumina Miseq platform (2  300 bp paired-end, v3 chemistry) at Genewiz (Azenta Life Sciences, Leipzig, Germany).