Bacterial diversity of zebrafish skin mucus and associated tank water

This study aimed to examine the skin mucus bacterial community composition of the zebrafish, Danio rerio. Here, bacterial diversity of the collection tank water and skin mucus microbiome from an established academic colony (housed on a flow through system) was identified through Illumina MiSeq sequencing of the V3-V4 region of the 16S rDNA gene from each sample. The goals of this study were to determine a standard sampling method for the skin mucus microbiome, identify prominent bacterial members of the skin mucus and compare to the surrounding environment. This work begins to describe the zebrafish skin mucus microbiota, facilitating future work to explore the role of these ectosymbionts in host biology.