title: 16S rRNA Bacterial Assemblage associated with Caribbean gorgonian corals
design: The frozen branches from all the collections were transported to the University of Mississippi Biology Department where they were lyophilized and stored at -80C. The microbiome DNA from the gorgonian E. tourneforti was extracted using the MoBio PowerSoil DNA Isolation Kit (MoBio, Carlsbad, CA) while form the other gorgonian species the microbiome DNA was extracted using the Wizard Genomic DNA Purification Kit (Promega, Madison, WI). Dual-indexed barcoded primers were used to amplify the extracted DNA following the Illumina MiSeq technique (Kozich et al. 2013, Stone & Jackson 2016). The amplified 16S rRNA gene fragments were combined and spiked with 5% PhiX (Jackson et al. 2015) before being sequenced at the University of Mississippi Medical Centre Molecular and Genomics Core facility