Effect of short-term room temperature storage on the microbial community in infant fecal samples.

ABSTRACT: Sample storage conditions are important for unbiased analysis of microbial communities in metagenomic studies. Specifically, for infant gut microbiota studies, stool specimens are often exposed to room temperature (RT) conditions prior to analysis. This could lead to variations in structural and quantitative assessment of bacterial communities. To estimate such effects of RT storage, we collected feces from 29 healthy infants (0-3 months) and partitioned each sample into 5 portions to be stored for different lengths of time at RT before freezing at -80 °C. Alpha diversity did not differ between samples with storage time from 0 to 2 hours. The UniFrac distances and microbial composition analysis showed significant differences by testing among individuals, but not by testing between differen

SUBMITTER: Guo Y 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4880902 | biostudies-literature | 2016 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature