“…These samples were collected from 16 geographically diverse cold seep sites from around the world (Supplementary Fig. 1) 1,3,40,50,64,[67][68][69][70][71][72][73][74][75][76][77] , encompassing various types of cold seeps such as oil and gas seeps, methane seeps, gas hydrates, asphalt volcanoes, and mud volcanoes. The sites include: Eastern North Pacific (ENP), Santa Monica Mounds (SMM), Western Gulf of Mexico (WGM), Eastern Gulf of Mexico (EGM), Northwestern Gulf of Mexico (NGM), Scotian Basin (SB), Haakon Mosby mud volcano (HM), Mediterranean Sea (MS), Laptev Sea (LS), Jiaolong cold seep (JL), Shenhu area (SH), Haiyang4 (HY4), Qiongdongnan Basin (QDN), Xisha Trough (XST), Haima seep (HM1, HM3, HM5, HM_SQ, S11, SY5, and SY6) and site F cold seep (RS, SF, FR, and SF_SQ).…”