Therefore, storing fecal samples at room temperature over 3 h after collection or allowing them to thaw and refreeze is not recommended for shotgun metagenomic sequencing, since DNA extracted from these samples can be significantly fragmented. Figure 1 Fragmentation analysis of genomic DNA. Microcapillary electrophoresis patterns of genomic DNA extracted from fecal samples

collected by 4 individuals (#1, #2, #3, #4) and stored in the following conditions: immediately frozen at −20°C (F); immediately frozen and www.selleckchem.com/products/lee011.html then unfrozen during 1 h and 3 h (UF1h, UF3h); kept at room temperature during 3 h, 24 h and 2 weeks (RT3h, RT24h, RT2w). The equivalent to 1 mg of fecal material is loaded on each lane. A DNA fragment size (base pair) ladder was loaded in the left most lanes. Table 1 Percentage of DNA compared to the frozen samples   % degraded Niraparib mw DNA n = 4 #1 #2 #3 #4 pvalue when compared to frozen samples F 12 28 10 9   UF1h 12 24 23 34 < 0.01 UF3h 25 39 31 34 < 0.001 RT3h 17 16 12 15 0.9270 RT24h 84 44 13 15 < 0.001 RT2w 48 38 26 40 < 0.001 Statistical analysis was performed using Poisson regression model; p value < 0.05 is considered significant; #1, #2, #3, #4 correspond to subjects 1, 2, 3, 4; F = frozen; UF1h = unfrozen during 1 h; UF3h = unfrozen during 3 h; RT = room temperature; 2w = 2 weeks. Even though mechanical disruption of the samples used in our extraction method could damage the

integrity of large DNA molecules, we believe that storage conditions, more than directly degrade DNA during storage period or the extraction step, dysregulate Saracatinib in vitro cellular compartments and activate enzymatic activities (i.e. nucleases). Further studies could be designed in order to test the effect of different extraction methods including mechanical or non-mechanical disruption on DNA integrity. Effect of storage conditions on microbial diversity Although storage conditions Non-specific serine/threonine protein kinase of stool samples greatly affected the integrity of bacterial DNA, this observation did not demonstrate an impediment for metagenomic analyses. In order to verify this extreme,

we examined to which extent storage conditions could bias intestinal microbial composition. By using the genomic DNA extracted from the 24 samples obtained from the 4 above cited volunteers (#1, #2, #3 and #4), we PCR-amplified the V4 region of the 16S rRNA gene and sequenced the products using a GS FLX 454 pyrosequencer. We obtained a total of 127,275 high quality sequences, which we then analyzed using the Qiime pipeline to determine and compare the microbial diversity. We validated the presence of a bacterial species or taxon when its abundance was higher than 0.2% in at least one sample. Accordingly, we identified a total of 188 taxa after validating an average of 3,400 sequences and 114 taxa per sample (see Additional file 1: Table S1). These 188 species classified into 48 genera and 4 phyla as follows: Firmicutes (48%), Bacteroidetes (46%), Actinobacteria (5%) and Proteobacteria (1%).