title: Diversity of photosynthetic picoeukaryotes in the NW Pacific
design: To amplify plastid 16S rRNA genes, the forward primer was based on the sequence of a degenerate marine algal plastid, PLA491F (5′- GAGGAATAAGCATCGGCTAA-3′, Fuller et al., 2006b), and the reverse primer was the bacteria-specific universal primer 907R (5′-CCGTCAATTCCTTTGAGTTT-3′, Muyzer et al., 1995). Amplicon PCR, PCR clean-up, and index PCR were generally performed as described in the MiSeq manual (Illumina 2013; Illumina, San Diego, CA, USA). The final PCR products were quantified using a nanodrop 1000 spectrophotometer; identical quantities of each product were pooled, and the products sequenced on the Illumina MiSeq 2 × 300 PE platform.