FastDNA SPIN Kit for Soil: A Key Technique for the Characterisation of Microbial Communities Colonising the Livestock Gastrointestinal Tract

Dr Amélia Camarinha-Silva, at the University of Hohenheim, Germany, uses target amplicon sequencing and shotgun metagenomics to approach the phylogenetic and functional characterisation of the microbial community present in livestock gastrointestinal tracts.

She explained: “We currently perform DNA extraction and use it to prepare all our high-throughput sequencing libraries. We know that the DNA extraction step has a huge effect on downstream analysis and in which microbial communities we are able to characterise, and so it is a very important step for us. It is also essential that this step is consistent to make our studies comparable and, for this, we need to always use the same DNA extraction methodology.

“We wanted to check which kit was the best to extract our samples. The best kit being the one that gave the optimum DNA concentration and purification and also the best output, by which I mean ability to extract all gram-positive and negative bacteria. We compared around 15 kits and the MP Biomedicals FastDNA SPIN kit for Soil was the one that worked the best.”

Dr Amélia Camarinha-Silva is the Head of the Livestock Microbial Ecology Group at the Institute of Animal Science, Hohenheim University, Germany.

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