Project: PRJNA609106
The aim of this study is the identification of normal (healthy) skin microbiome signatures in individuals living in Saudi Arabia through the analysis of 16S rRNA of the resident skin microbiome in inner elbow. Eight healthy volunteers from Saudi Arabia (4 male & 4 female), aged 20 to 37 years, were enrolled in the current study. The skin samples were collected by swabbing from areas of the antecubital fossa (inner elbow) of the right arm for each subject with no prior cleaning or treatment of skin surface. Swabbing has previously been shown to be as effective as other skin sampling methods for surveying bacterial diversity (Grice et al., 2008). Swabs were obtained using a single-use sterilized cotton-tipped pledget, soaked in 0.15 M NaCl with 0.1% Tween 20 (Fisher Scientific). PCR amplification of the V3-V4 regions of bacterial 16S rRNA was performed and amplicons were, then, shipped to Beijing Genome Institute (BGI) in China for library construction and deep sequencing on Illumina Miseq platform to recover ~300 bp pair-end reads of the V3 and V4 regions.