DNA extraction approaches substantially influence the assessment of the human breast milk microbiome

Chloe A. Douglas, Kerry L. Ivey, Lito E. Papanicolas, Karen P. Best, Beverly S. Muhlhausler, Geraint B. Rogers

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

56 Citations (Scopus)
87 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

In addition to providing nutritional and bioactive factors necessary for infant development, human breast milk contains bacteria that contribute to the establishment of commensal microbiota in the infant. However, the composition of this bacterial community differs considerably between studies. We hypothesised that bacterial DNA extraction methodology from breast milk samples are a substantial contributor to these inter-study differences. We tested this hypothesis by applying five widely employed methodologies to a mock breast milk sample and four individual human breast milk samples. Significant differences in DNA yield and purity were observed between methods (P < 0.05). Microbiota composition, assessed by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing, also differed significantly with extraction methodology (P < 0.05), including in the contribution of contaminant signal. Concerningly, many of the bacterial taxa identified here as contaminants have been reported as components of the breast milk microbiome in other studies. These findings highlight the importance of using stringent, well-validated, DNA extraction methodologies for analysis of the breast milk microbiome, and exercising caution interpreting microbiota data from low-biomass contexts.

Original languageEnglish
Article number123
Number of pages10
JournalScientific Reports
Volume10
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2020

Bibliographical note

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

Keywords

  • human breast milk
  • microbiome
  • DNA extraction

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'DNA extraction approaches substantially influence the assessment of the human breast milk microbiome'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this