New Kit to Advance Microbiome Characterisation in Soils Announced

Qiagen have announced the worldwide launch of the new DNeasy PowerSoil Pro Kit, the next generation of sample technology for the extraction of fungal and bacterial DNA from a range of soil samples.

The new DNeasy PowerSoil Pro Kits featuring a streamlined version of Qiagen’s proprietary Inhibitor Removal Technology (IRT) and a redesigned bead tube and lysis chemistry for the disruption of difficult soil samples. The DNeasy PowerSoil Pro Kits have demonstrated that they outperform the original PowerSoil technology and can generate microbial DNA isolates of even higher quality in even less time. Soil samples are challenging for molecular analyses used in microbiome research because they commonly carry substances that inhibit current methods, such as PCR and next-generation sequencing. The improved IRT and optimised chemistry of the DNeasy PowerSoil Pro Kit eliminates these inhibitors from soil and environmental samples, delivering high yields of pure microbial DNA that can be used directly in downstream applications. Furthermore, analysis of the isolated DNA reveals an accurate representation of the microbial diversity present in a sample, as measured by the total number of operational taxonomic units detected by 16S rRNA gene sequencing.

“Microbiome research is an exciting investigative area that is exponentially expanding our understanding of the microbial world,” explained Dominic O’Neil, Director of Microbiome Product Development at Qiagen. “Scientists are uncovering symbiotic relationships that have the potential to drive improvements in crop productivity, assist environmental remediation, boost ecosystem services, or cure health conditions that we are just beginning to understand. The key to these improvements in life lies in notoriously difficult sample types, like soils. Qiagen already offers market-leading solutions for DNA purification from such tough matrices but we continually strive to improve performance and streamline workflows. Coupled with other Qiagen kits and instruments, we are empowering innovation in microbiome research, from Sample to Insight, by emphasising high-quality analytes that truly represent the composition and abundance of microbial communities in samples and are ready to be used in sensitive analyses.”