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Microbes and microbiome

Microbiome research guidelines

A world both stunning and staggering

Where there is life, there are microbes. Rich in complexity, these diverse organisms form intricate networks, affecting the well being of humans, animals, plants and the environment, for good and for bad. Deciphering microbiomes is a task both stunning and staggering. Samples are often a complicated mixture of microbe entangled with their metabolic products, organic and inorganic materials, biopolymers and metal ions.

Here, we provide guidelines to improve the reliability, reproducibility and quality of results from your most challenging samples.

How challenging is your sample?

Extracting nucleic acids from samples from diverse sources can be challenging in different ways. First, microbes have various cellular structures, such as distinctive cell walls, that can make them tough to disrupt, lyse and homogenize. Furthermore, some sample homogenates contain higher amounts of inhibitors. These impede or influence many downstream applications such as PCR and sequencing. Find our guidelines below for improving your results when working with microbes.

Microbiome research guidelines

Guidelines: Extracting microbial DNA from soil samples

Both high in inhibitors and difficult to lyse, soil can be one of the most challenging sample sources with which to work. Download our guidelines to learn how to increase the yield and quality of microbial DNA extracted from soil samples and how to improve the result of downstream applications such as NGS and PCR.

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Want more microbiome?

Webinars, instructional videos, an entire infotainment show, selection guides and more are available on our environmental microbiome page.

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