title: Dessicated rep 3
organism: soil metagenome
description: Surface soils (0-20 cm deep, 5 cm diameter cores) were collected from 16 randomly selected locations immediately adjacent to the Tall Wheatgrass Irrigation Field Trial experiment in Prosser, WA. Samples were transported to the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) on ice and stored at 4℃ until processing. Soils were homogenized on ethanol-sterilized 4 mm sieves, and rocks were removed. Sixty grams (dry weight soil equivalent) were weighed into autoclaved 4 oz jars, and the soils were brought to 75% water holding capacity by addition of sterile deionized water. Three replicate incubations were set up for each of the two sampling time points (n=6). First, the soils were preincubated for one week during which time they were gradually exposed to increasing temperature until the target incubation temperature of 30C average summer temperature  was reached. The incubation temperatures were: 10 C on day 1, 15C on day 3, 25C on day 5 and 30C on day 7. During the pre-incubation water was added to the soils daily to maintain them at 75% water holding capacity by mass. Once at 30C, three incubation jars continued to incubate at 30C, without any further moisture additions. Moisture loss was monitored by mass, until complete desiccation was achieved after 14 days. Three replicate samples were harvested, representing the post-desiccation soils. Sample was stored at -80C until being processed for DNA and RNA extractions.