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© 2019 Oberacker et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.

Abstract

Current molecular biology laboratories rely heavily on the purification and manipulation of nucleic acids. Yet, commonly used centrifuge- and column-based protocols require specialised equipment, often use toxic reagents, and are not economically scalable or practical to use in a high-throughput manner. Although it has been known for some time that magnetic beads can provide an elegant answer to these issues, the development of open-source protocols based on beads has been limited. In this article, we provide step-by-step instructions for an easy synthesis of functionalised magnetic beads, and detailed protocols for their use in the high-throughput purification of plasmids, genomic DNA, RNA and total nucleic acid (TNA) from a range of bacterial, animal, plant, environmental and synthetic sources. We also provide a bead-based protocol for bisulfite conversion and size selection of DNA and RNA fragments. Comparison to other methods highlights the capability, versatility, and extreme cost-effectiveness of using magnetic beads. These open-source protocols and the associated webpage (https://bomb.bio) can serve as a platform for further protocol customisation and community engagement.

Details

Title
Bio-On-Magnetic-Beads (BOMB): Open platform for high-throughput nucleic acid extraction and manipulation
Author
Oberacker, Phil; Stepper, Peter; Bond, Donna M; Focken, Jule; Meyer, Vivien; Schelle, Luca; Sugrue, Victoria J; Gert-Jan Jeunen; Moser, Tim; Hore, Steven R; Ferdinand von Meyenn; Hipp, Katharina; Hore, Timothy A; Jurkowski, Tomasz P
First page
e3000107
Section
Community Page
Publication year
2019
Publication date
Jan 2019
Publisher
Public Library of Science
ISSN
15449173
e-ISSN
15457885
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
ProQuest document ID
2249960994
Copyright
© 2019 Oberacker et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.