Figure 4

Effect of bead-beating on genomic DNA integrity and on microbial community composition. (A) Gel electrophoresis analysis. For each sample, genomic DNA equivalent to 1 mg of faecal sample was loaded on an Agilent 2100 Bioanalyzer chip using the Agilent 12000 kit. (B) Microbial diversity profile at the phylum level. Sample identification is identical to that indicated in the legend of Figure 3. DL5 and DL8 correspond to the participants L5 and L8 from the homogenisation evaluation. Samples with the identification starting with DL5C and DL8C were not subjected to bead-beating nor did they contain PBS. DL5P and DL8P contained only PBS. Black bars indicate the samples subjected to bead-beating and grey bars those that were not, while blue bars show the samples to which PBS was added.