Bacterial assemblages associated with the coral Platygyra carnosus healthy tissue
The bacterial 16S rRNA genes were amplified by PCR using the FastStart High Fidelity PCR system (Roche Molecular Diagnostics, Branchburg, NJ, USA) with the primers 341F (5’- ACTCCTACGG GAGGCAGCAG-3’) and 926R (5’- CCGTCAATTCMTTTGAGTTT-3’) targeting the V3-V5 region. Both forward and reverse primer were fused to Roche Fusing primer A and B, and each Fusion primer A was followed by a unique 10 bases DNA bar-codes specific for each sample. The amplicons, amplified in duplicates from each DNA sample, were pooled and gel purified using 1% agarose gel and the PureLink* Quick Gel Extraction Kit (Invitrogen Life technologies, HK). The quality and quantity of amplicons were checked with Nanodrop 2000 and PicoGreen assay before sequencing.