An improved rapid method for DNA recovery from cotton swabs

We present a novel rapid method for the recovery of cellular and free DNA from cotton swabs based on a simple elution buffer containing a high molecular weight polymer and detergent combined with a short proteinase K digestion to release cellular DNA. This method shows increased yields approaching 80% recovery of the input DNA compared to the QIAamp DNA Mini kit standard extraction protocol for swabs which has a recovery of 20–30%. The buffer components in the described method are compatible with direct PCR analysis of the isolated DNA without further purification. Recovery efficiencies were estimated by qPCR.