title: Seasonal patterns in bacterial diversity in the northern Gulf of Mexico
design: Surface water was collected from 4 stations over 2 years and filtered through a 150 um Nitex screen followed by filtration through a 0.7 um glass fiber filter. Prokaryote cells were collected on a 142 mm 0.2 um Durapore filter that was stored at -20C until extraction. DNA was extracted from 1/16 of the filter. Triplicate PCR reactions amplified the V6 region of the bacterial 16S rRNA genes. Reactions were pooled and cleaned up with a Qiagen PCR clean up kit. The amplicons, which included barcodes and Ion Torrent adapters were pooled and sequenced using 100 bp kits on 316 chips. Ten different samples were pooled on each chip using 5 bp barcodes.