Comparing the consistency of nucleic acid extraction of human gut microbiota from extraction kits that use various lysing technologies

The human gut microbiota consists of over 10,000 diverse species of ar- chaea, bacteria, and viruses. Some species are easy to lyse while others are difficult due to unique or complex cell membranes and cell walls, which poses a problem for nucleic acid extraction. The inefficiency of chemical lysis was recently discovered, and, in response, a variety of technologies in-corporating mechanical methods for lyses have recently been developed in microbial nucleic acid extraction kits, each exhibiting different price points, protocols, and materials. The efficiency of these new technologies is un- clear, so we intend to characterize these kits by extracting DNA from human gut microbiota and analyzing the nucleic acid yield, quality, and species makeup using 16S rRNA sequencing