Abstract

AbstractCurrent freshwater biomonitoring with diatoms is based on microscopic examination of the morphology of their silica skeleton. This standardized approach is time consuming and requires a high degree of taxonomic expertise. Metabarcoding combined with high-throughput sequencing (HTS) has great potential for next-generation biomonitoring applications but requires standardization. Molecular inventories are strongly influenced by the DNA extraction method used, but the effect of extraction protocols has not been tested to enable selection of the best DNA extraction method for HTS metabarcoding. We used 5 DNA extraction methods combining various types of cell lysis and DNA purification to extract DNA from 8 pure diatom cultures and 8 samples from streams and lakes with differing water quality. We compared the methods based on: 1) quality and purity of the extracted DNA, 2) community inventories obtained from HTS targeting the ribulose-1, 5-bisphosphate carboxylase (rbcL) barcode, and 3) similarity betwe...

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