Evaluation of the Effect of Storage Methods on Fecal, Saliva, and Skin Microbiome Composition
Clarisse Marotz, Kellen Cavagnero, Se Jin Song, Daniel McDonald, Stephen Wandro, Greg Humphrey, MacKenzie Bryant, Gail Ackermann, Edgar Diaz, Rob Knight
Abstract
Expanding our knowledge of microbial communities across diverse environments includes collecting samples in places far from the laboratory. Identifying cost-effective preservatives that will enable room temperature storage of microbial communities for sequencing analysis is crucial to enabling microbiome analyses across diverse populations. Here, we validate findings that 95% ethanol efficiently preserves microbial composition at room temperature for weeks. We also identified the optimal ratio of 95% ethanol to sample for stool and saliva to preserve both microbial load and composition. These results provide rationale for an accessible, nontoxic, cost-effective solution that will enable crowdsourcing microbiome studies, such as The Microsetta Initiative, and lower the barrier for collecting diverse samples.