PubMed · 2026-07-03
A new technique suppresses plant DNA contamination during microbiome sequencing by physically damaging plant cells before applying a DNA-blocking dye, leaving bacterial DNA intact and readable. The approach requires no prior knowledge of the host plant's genome and outperforms current sequence-based methods, especially in low-biomass samples.
Cryopreservation and mechanical disruption selectively damaged plant cells and increased their susceptibility to PMA treatment without harming bacterial cells
PMA-PCR significantly increased the proportion of bacterial DNA reads in sequencing output and improved detection of bacterial diversity
The method matched or outperformed sequence-dependent blocking primers for reducing host DNA interference, with the largest gains in low-biomass samples