title: Bacterial community structure in two color morphs  of the Hawaiian reef coral, Montipora capitata
design: To compare the bacterial community structure of healthy red and orange fragments of M. capitata, total DNA from coral crushate was extracted using the MoBio PowerSoil DNA Extraction kit (MoBio Carlsbad, CA USA) as per the manufacturer’s instructions with one exception; the lysis step was modified by increasing the heat lysis incubation period to 15 min with 1 min of vortexing every five minutes. 300 bp DNA fragments containing the V3 hyper-variable region of the 16S rRNA gene were amplified using a bar-coded primer set constructed for pyrosequencing (Table S1). PCR products were visualized on 2% agarose TAE gels and purified using the Qiaquick Gel Extraction Kit (QIAGEN, Inc). Purified PCR products were submitted to the Advanced Studies of Genomics, Proteomics, and Bioinformatics sequencing facility of the University of Hawaii at Manoa (http://asgpb.mhpcc.hawaii.edu/) for high-throughput sequencing on a Roche 454 Next Generation GSFLX system