Culturing bacteria from our hands and mouth.
We chose one of the colonies growing on the plate to submit for sequencing. When we received the results, we used BLAST local alignment search to identify the strains.
The colony I chose from my oral microbiome plate had highest identity to either Staphylococcus aureus or Staphylococcus haemolyticus. Staphylococcus species are found on a moderate percentage of oral microbiomes.
A study of the microbiome composition of 120 individuals. Image from Hernandez, B. Y., Zhu, X., Goodman, M. T., Gatewood, R., Mendiola, P., Quinata, K., & Paulino, Y. C. (2017). Betel nut chewing, oral premalignant lesions, and the oral microbiome. PloS one, 12(2), e0172196.
The colony from the hand microbiome was identified as Kocuria rhizophila, a soil dwelling Gram-positive bacterium which is also used industrially for antimicrobial testing and in food preparation.