A comparison of DNA/RNA extraction protocols for high-throughput sequencing of microbial communities.

BioRxiv : the Preprint Server for Biology
Justin P ShafferRob Knight

Abstract

One goal among microbial ecology researchers is to capture the maximum amount of information from all organisms in a sample. The recent COVID-19 pandemic, caused by the RNA virus SARS-CoV-2, has highlighted a gap in traditional DNA-based protocols, including the high-throughput methods we previously established as field standards. To enable simultaneous SARS-CoV-2 and microbial community profiling, we compare the relative performance of two total nucleic acid extraction protocols and our previously benchmarked protocol. We included a diverse panel of environmental and host-associated sample types, including body sites commonly swabbed for COVID-19 testing. Here we present results comparing the cost, processing time, DNA and RNA yield, microbial community composition, limit of detection, and well-to-well contamination, between these protocols.

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BETA
ERP124610

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BETA
RNA assay

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bowtie2
of Life Toolkit App
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