This project is part of a collaboration led by Dr. Valerie Paul at the Smithsonian Marine Station to develop and apply live probiotic bacteria to treat corals with stony coral tissue loss disease. The data analyzed by scripts in this repository examine the microbiome of Montastraea cavernosa corals before and after probiotic treatments with Pseudoalteromonas sp. strain McH1-7 in the field at site BS2. Microbiome samples were collected in August 2020, October 2020, and January 2021.
Microbiome composition was assessed by amplicon libraries of the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene. In addition, droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) was used to quantify gene copies of two biomarkers: one for McH1-7 and one for the putative coral pathogen Vibrio coralliilyticus.