Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRs

Abstract DNA metabarcoding is a powerful tool to assess arthropod diversity in environmental bulk samples such as Malaise trap, pitfall trap, or hand net samples. While comparative performance tests for different extraction protocols, primers, and Taq polymerases have been made, the effect of differ...

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Auteurs principaux: Dominik Buchner, Arne J. Beermann, Florian Leese, Martina Weiss
Format: Article
Langue:English
Publié: Wiley 2021-07-01
Collection:Ecology and Evolution
Sujets:
Accès en ligne:https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7753
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author Dominik Buchner
Arne J. Beermann
Florian Leese
Martina Weiss
author_facet Dominik Buchner
Arne J. Beermann
Florian Leese
Martina Weiss
author_sort Dominik Buchner
collection DOAJ
description Abstract DNA metabarcoding is a powerful tool to assess arthropod diversity in environmental bulk samples such as Malaise trap, pitfall trap, or hand net samples. While comparative performance tests for different extraction protocols, primers, and Taq polymerases have been made, the effect of different PCR volumes on bulk sample metabarcoding performance is less explored. Although using small PCR volumes reduces overall costs, they may lead to decreased taxon recovery or higher replicate variability due to increased pipetting imprecision, PCR stochasticity (PCR drift), or inhibition when using high amounts of template community DNA. We here performed a simple DNA metabarcoding experiment to test if species detection and the consistency of technical replicates decrease with decreasing PCR volume in standard reaction tubes. We used a mock community sample consisting of different amounts of DNA from 35 arthropod species, and a Malaise trap sample composed of many thousand insect specimens. PCR volumes tested were 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50 µl. Both samples were replicated 14 times in the first PCR step with two technical replicates each in the second PCR step. Our data show that small PCR volumes did neither have systematically lower species detection or richness values, nor lower consistency between PCR replicates. We therefore recommend low volumes primarily depending on handling constraints. Further, we emphasize the importance of sequencing depth for taxon recovery.
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spelling doaj.art-56540f06023949319cb901b9b6cd4d3c2022-12-21T21:26:58ZengWileyEcology and Evolution2045-77582021-07-0111139092909910.1002/ece3.7753Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRsDominik Buchner0Arne J. Beermann1Florian Leese2Martina Weiss3Aquatic Ecosystem Research University of Duisburg‐Essen Essen GermanyAquatic Ecosystem Research University of Duisburg‐Essen Essen GermanyAquatic Ecosystem Research University of Duisburg‐Essen Essen GermanyAquatic Ecosystem Research University of Duisburg‐Essen Essen GermanyAbstract DNA metabarcoding is a powerful tool to assess arthropod diversity in environmental bulk samples such as Malaise trap, pitfall trap, or hand net samples. While comparative performance tests for different extraction protocols, primers, and Taq polymerases have been made, the effect of different PCR volumes on bulk sample metabarcoding performance is less explored. Although using small PCR volumes reduces overall costs, they may lead to decreased taxon recovery or higher replicate variability due to increased pipetting imprecision, PCR stochasticity (PCR drift), or inhibition when using high amounts of template community DNA. We here performed a simple DNA metabarcoding experiment to test if species detection and the consistency of technical replicates decrease with decreasing PCR volume in standard reaction tubes. We used a mock community sample consisting of different amounts of DNA from 35 arthropod species, and a Malaise trap sample composed of many thousand insect specimens. PCR volumes tested were 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, and 50 µl. Both samples were replicated 14 times in the first PCR step with two technical replicates each in the second PCR step. Our data show that small PCR volumes did neither have systematically lower species detection or richness values, nor lower consistency between PCR replicates. We therefore recommend low volumes primarily depending on handling constraints. Further, we emphasize the importance of sequencing depth for taxon recovery.https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7753amplicon sequencingbiomonitoringbulk sampleMalaise trapPCR bias
spellingShingle Dominik Buchner
Arne J. Beermann
Florian Leese
Martina Weiss
Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRs
Ecology and Evolution
amplicon sequencing
biomonitoring
bulk sample
Malaise trap
PCR bias
title Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRs
title_full Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRs
title_fullStr Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRs
title_full_unstemmed Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRs
title_short Cooking small and large portions of “biodiversity‐soup”: Miniaturized DNA metabarcoding PCRs perform as good as large‐volume PCRs
title_sort cooking small and large portions of biodiversity soup miniaturized dna metabarcoding pcrs perform as good as large volume pcrs
topic amplicon sequencing
biomonitoring
bulk sample
Malaise trap
PCR bias
url https://doi.org/10.1002/ece3.7753
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