Taxonomy, function and plasmids of microbial soil communities of Polish salt graduation towers

Salt graduation towers create hypersaline environments that host specialized microbial communities, offering unique opportunities to study their adaptations to salinity. In this study, we present a comprehensive catalogue of data recovered from soil samples collected across three salt graduation towers in Poland (Ciechocinek, Konstancin-Jeziorna and Busko-Zdrój). Our investigation includes total metagenomic and 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing of nine collected soil samples, as well as metaplasmidome sequencing from most saline samples at each location. We established both solid and liquid enrichment cultures for these high-salinity samples, followed by hybrid long- and short-read sequencing. We also used multiple state-of-the-art tools to fully describe and characterize the recovered sequences. Overall, this comprehensive dataset integrates metagenomic, enrichment culture, 16S rRNA amplicon, and (meta)plasmidome sequencing data with corresponding physicochemical soil parameters, providing a valuable resource for comparative analyses, method development, and studies of microbial diversity and adaptation across saline environments.