Paper

Bio-On-Magnetic-Beads (BOMB): Open platform for high-throughput nucleic acid extraction and manipulation

Hore, Timothy A, Jurkowski, Tomasz P, Moser, Tim, Hipp, Katharina, Oberacker, Phil, Hore, Steven R, Ferdinand Von Meyenn, Schelle, Luca, Focken, Jule, Stepper, Peter, Sugrue, Victoria J, Bond, Donna M, Meyer, Vivien, Hohn, Sven, Gert-Jan Jeunen

2018

Overview

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 and total RNA from different sources, as well as environmental TNA and PCR amplicons. 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.

• Publisher: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press,Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory
• Subject: Bisulfite / Community involvement / Deoxyribonucleic acid / DNA / Molecular Biology / Nucleic acids / Plasmids / Purification / Reagents / Ribonucleic acid / RNA