[Community changes to vesicle addition] - NCBI accession metadata for microbial community responses to bacterial extracellular vesicles in the Sargasso Sea, collected on R/V Atlantic Explorer cruises AE2412 and AE2427 in Apr and Nov 2024 (Collaborative Research: Quantifying the role of microbial extracellular vesicles in marine dissolved organic matter production and consumption)

To determine whether marine microbes can utilize bacterial extracellular vesicles as a carbon source, we conducted bottle incubations in the Sargasso Sea onboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer kept in a flow-through system. Surface seawater samples were supplemented with either buffer (control), glucose, or extracellular vesicles purified from the cyanobacterium Prochlorococcus or the heterotroph Alteromonas.

Community samples were collected over a period of four days aboard the R/V Atlantic Explorer, during cruises AE2412 and AE2427 in April and November 2024. 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing (targeting the V4-V5 region) was carried out to enable analysis of changes in the community. This dataset provides the NCBI/SRA accession metadata associated with this 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing. These data will be useful in understanding how bacterial extracellular vesicles - numerically abundant nanoscale structures released by all cells - function as a component of marine dissolved organic carbon pools.