Best method for extraction on low concentration environmental DNA? - (Nov/05/2012 )

Hi all

I could really do with some help. I am swabbing environmental sites, ie floors, surfaces (a 10cm3 area) and trying to extract DNA. Needless to say, Im not having a lot of luck, I think quantities are very low and inhibitors are present.

I have tried Qiagen colums with a bead-beating step first and also Phenol:chloroform. The column based method was better but neither give me a lot of DNA.

Does anyone have any ideas about increasing my yield please?

thanks

Lucky you have some... I've been struggling with some samples that barely have any cells... and using 10 g of sample

If inhibitors are a problem you may want to try some MoBIO kits, they use a patented inhibitor removal technology (as they call it) that works pretty well with difficult samples.

Don't know if it would help:
http://www.mobio.com...dna-from-swabs/

And I think they send kit samples to test

Thanks

I tried the Mobio kits, maybe I should give them another go! Thanks for your help and good luck with your work...!