Comparative study of DNA extraction methods in microalgae

• Grant number: 15/02307-1
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Scientific Initiation
• Effective date (Start): June 01, 2015
• Effective date (End): December 31, 2015
• Field of knowledge: Biological Sciences - Ecology
• Principal Investigator: Hugo Miguel Preto de Morais Sarmento
• Grantee: Erika Sayuri Kanashiro
• Home Institution: Centro de Ciências Biológicas e da Saúde (CCBS). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 14/14139-3 - Microbial processes and biodiversity in aquatic ecosystems, AP.JP

Abstract

In recent years, the study of the microbial component of biosphere biodiversity has had huge advances, particularly with the emergence of next generation sequencing techniques. A critical step in this process is the DNA extraction method. The standardization of methods used to access the biodiversity of microorganisms was proposed by the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP), however, these methods were preferentially developed for bacteria. For analysis of coexistence and covariance between bacterioplankton and phytoplankton, it would be important to have similar extraction efficiency for all phylogenetic groups. Some preliminary tests showed that some microalgal groups are difficult to extract because of the structure and chemical composition of the cell wall. It is therefore important to do a set of comparative tests between DNA extraction methods in order to validate and standardize one of the methods, before applying it in environmental samples. The objective of this study is to compare the standard method of DNA extraction proposed by the EMP, the Mobio PowerSoil DNA extraction Kit, with the currently protocol already used in the Laboratory of Phycology of the UFSCar (Invisorb Spin Plant Mini Kit Invitek, Molecular Stratec) in order to compare extraction efficiencies for different groups of microalgae.