Human and Extracellular DNA Depletion for Metagenomic Analysis of Complex Clinical Infection Samples Yields Optimized Viable Microbiome Profiles

Abstract

Nelson et al. describe a method for reducing both human cellular DNA and extracellular DNA (human and bacterial) in a complex respiratory sample using hypotonic lysis and endonuclease digestion. This method increases effective microbial sequencing depth and minimizes bias introduced into subsequent phylogenetic analysis by bacterial extracellular DNA.