Host-derived population genomics data provides insights into bacterial and diatom composition of the killer whale skin.

ABSTRACT: Recent exploration into the interactions and relationship between hosts and their microbiota has revealed a connection between many aspects of the host's biology, health and associated micro-organisms. Whereas amplicon sequencing has traditionally been used to characterize the microbiome, the increasing number of published population genomics data sets offers an underexploited opportunity to study microbial profiles from the host shotgun sequencing data. Here, we use sequence data originally generated from killer whale Orcinus orca skin biopsies for population genomics, to characterize the skin microbiome and investigate how host social and geographical factors influence the microbial community composition. Having identified 845 microbial taxa from 2.4 million reads that did not map to the

SUBMITTER: Hooper R 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6487819 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature