Combination of direct boiling and glass beads increases the purity and accuracy of bacterial DNA extraction

Abstract

Extraction of DNA is a key step in molecular biology experiments and important for counting tiny microbial individuals. Direct boiling and mechanical cell lysis like glass beads are two independent physical extraction methods, thus crossing the barriers of thresholds of magnitude in popular reagent kits or traditional spread plate method when non-equilibrium phenomenon is ongoing. The two approaches above were combined to generate a new one. In three typical microbial species, direct boiling with glass beads significantly increased the purity of DNA solution compared with some other methods (p < 0.05). The qPCR results of them were closer to direct microscopy counting than some other methods. Therefore, it provides a new choice in extracting bacterial DNA for specific circumstances.