Sand from salt crusts zone 16S Bacteria
DNA extraction was performed using the DNeasy PowerSoil Pro kit (Qiagen) following the manufacturers instructions. The V3 to V4 region of bacterial 16S rRNA genes was amplified using the primers 341F (5'-CCTACGGGNGGCWGCAG- 3') and 805R (5' GACTACHVGGGTATCTAATCC-3'). The PCR protocol comprised an initial denaturation at 95C for 3 min, 25 cycles at 95C for 30 s, annealing at 55C for 30 s, and extension at 72C for 30 s, followed by a final extension at 72C for 5 min. The PCR products werepurified using AMPure XP beads (Beckman Coulter, Inc., Fullerton, CA, USA); the Nextera XT index kit (Illumina) was used for library preparation, and the resulting sample was quantified using the Qubit double-stranded DNA (dsDNA) assay kit (Life Technologies, USA). Sequencing was performed using a MiSeq platform with 300-bp paired-end format (Macrogen Co., Seoul, South Korea).