Amplicon sequencing of bovine teat apex microbiome
DNA was extracted from each sample using the PowerSoil Pro Kit (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany).  The extraction of DNA was automated on the QiaCube Connect instrument (Qiagen, Hilden, Germany).  The V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene was amplified using the Meta_V4_515F and Meta_V4_806R primer pair.  Amplified libraries were then sequenced on an Illumina MiSeq instrument (Illumina Inc., San Diego, CA) using the v3 chemistry (2x300 base pairs).