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Title: Size Matters: Assessing Optimum Soil Sample Size for Fungal and Bacterial Community Structure Analyses Using High Throughput Sequencing of rRNA Gene Amplicons

Journal Article · · Frontiers in Microbiology
 [1];  [2];  [1];  [3]
  1. Arizona State Univ., Mesa, AZ (United States)
  2. CSIRO Agriculture, Glen Osmond, SA (Australia)
  3. Michigan State Univ., East Lansing, MI (United States). Center for Microbial Ecology

We examined the effect of different soil sample sizes obtained from an agricultural field, under a single cropping system uniform in soil properties and aboveground crop responses, on bacterial and fungal community structure and microbial diversity indices. DNA extracted from soil sample sizes of 0.25, 1, 5, and 10 g using MoBIO kits and from 10 and 100 g sizes using a bead-beating method (SARDI) were used as templates for high-throughput sequencing of 16S and 28S rRNA gene amplicons for bacteria and fungi, respectively, on the Illumina MiSeq and Roche 454 platforms. Sample size significantly affected overall bacterial and fungal community structure, replicate dispersion and the number of operational taxonomic units (OTUs) retrieved. Richness, evenness and diversity were also significantly affected. The largest diversity estimates were always associated with the 10 g MoBIO extractions with a corresponding reduction in replicate dispersion. For the fungal data, smaller MoBIO extractions identified more unclassified Eukaryota incertae sedis and unclassified glomeromycota while the SARDI method retrieved more abundant OTUs containing unclassified Pleosporales and the fungal genera Alternaria and Cercophora. Overall, these findings indicate that a 10 g soil DNA extraction is most suitable for both soil bacterial and fungal communities for retrieving optimal diversity while still capturing rarer taxa in concert with decreasing replicate variation.

Research Organization:
Arizona State Univ., Mesa, AZ (United States)
Sponsoring Organization:
USDOE
Grant/Contract Number:
SC0004601
OSTI ID:
1280873
Journal Information:
Frontiers in Microbiology, Vol. 7; ISSN 1664-302X
Publisher:
Frontiers Research FoundationCopyright Statement
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
English
Citation Metrics:
Cited by: 50 works
Citation information provided by
Web of Science

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Making big data smart—how to use metagenomics to understand soil quality journal March 2017
Effect of LSU and ITS genetic markers and reference databases on analyses of fungal communities journal November 2018
Effect of the extraction and purification of soil DNA and pooling of PCR amplification products on the description of bacterial and archaeal communities journal March 2019
Generating amplicon reads for microbial community assessment with next‐generation sequencing journal August 2019
A common garden experiment with Porphyra umbilicalis (Rhodophyta) evaluates methods to study spatial differences in the macroalgal microbiome journal August 2018
Distinct Drivers of Core and Accessory Components of Soil Microbial Community Functional Diversity under Environmental Changes journal October 2019
DNA extraction replicates improve diversity and compositional dissimilarity in metabarcoding of eukaryotes in marine sediments journal June 2017
Identification of new microbial functional standards for soil quality assessment journal January 2020
A 2-year field trial reveals no significant effects of GM high-methionine soybean on the rhizosphere bacterial communities journal July 2018
Performance of the melting seawater‐ice elution method on the metabarcoding characterization of benthic protist communities journal March 2020