Amphibian mast cells: barriers to deadly chytrid fungus infections
Enriching X. laevis mast cells promotes greater mucin content within cutaneous mucus glands and protects frogs from Bd-mediated changes to their skin microbiomes. Frogs were housed individually (N=6/treatment group). At indicated times, frogs were gently rinsed with sterile deionized water to remove transient microbes and gently swabbed 20 times, dorsally. Genomic DNA was extracted from swabs using a PowerSoil Pro kit on a Qiacube HT (QIAGEN, MD). One-step PCR library prep and dual-index paired-endIllumina sequencing was used to sequence the skin microbiome of individual frogs. A ~380 basepair region in the V3-V5 region of the 16S rRNA gene using the universal primers 515F-Y(GTGYCAGCMGCCGCGGTAA) and 939R (CTTGTGCGGGCCCCCGTCAATTC) was usedfor amplification.