Microbiome diversity of low biomass skin sites is captured by metagenomics but not 16S amplicon sequencing

This study compared the impact of three DNA extraction methods as well as two sequencing methods on the output of microbiome analysis of human skin microbiome samples. The lower leg and forehead skin of 20 healthy volunteers was swabbed to yield replicate samples extracted with DNeasy PowerSoil, ZymoBIOMICS and ReadyLyse methods. Samples were then sequenced with shotgun metagenomics (one extraction set) and 16S amplicon sequencing (all samples). Lieberman lab (MIT, IMES)