Naturally-diverse aerobiology and mice gut microbiota. Mouse-soil exposure study

We subjected 54 x 3-5 week old inbred BALB/C mice (27 female, 27 male) to a 7 week exposure to airborne environmental microbiota treatments in the form of light soil dust, using soils from a high biodiversity woodland, a low biodiversity grassland, and no soil (control). We tracked changes in soil microbiota, air (dust) microbiota, and mice gut microbiota. Specifically, we targeted the bacterial 16S rRNA V3-V4 gene region using forward primer 341F (CCTAYGGGRBGCASCAG) and reverse primer 806R (GGACTACNNGGGTATCTAAT). PCR and sequencing was performed by the Australian Genome Research Facility (AGRF) using the Illumina Miseq plaftorm.