I entered the world of 16S rRNA gene metabarcoding as a naïve PhD student around five years ago. Like many people, I had hoped that there would have been others before me that had beaten the path and could guide me through the many pitfalls of this experimental approach. How wrong I was! I became …
We are a research group working on Genetics in a Vet School and closely collaborating with veterinary clinicians and dermatologists. We moved from specific pathogens, such as Leishmania, to specific commensals such as Demodex… and finally ended studying the whole: the skin microbiota on healthy dogs. Vets are always wondering why there are differences among …
So I had two thoughts when I read the article title “Indexed PCR Primers Induce Template-Specific Bias in Large-Scale DNA Sequencing Studies“… #1: Ack! Yet another thing to worry about in the insanely complicated craziness that is 16S amplicon sequencing. #2: I probably shouldn’t be the person to blog about this because I’ve honestly never …