An ambient-temperature stabilisation device performs comparably to flash-frozen collection for stool metabolomics in infants
Ramamoorthy et al.
The finding, in our words
An ambient-temperature DNA Genotek device recovered 94.5% of the metabolites seen in flash-frozen aliquots with strong agreement: room-temperature stabilisation can stand in for immediate freezing.
A paraphrase to the Library’s standard, never the abstract. The source is one link away and is always the authority.
In children, stool preserved in OMNIgene-GUT kept its microbial community structure better than unpreserved stool, with alpha and beta diversity similar to direct freezing, which supports the kit for decentralised stool collection from children.
OMNIgene·GUT stabilised stool gave detectable total bile acid concentrations but differed significantly from snap frozen samples; however, relative concentrations of cholanic, chenodeoxycholic, deoxycholic and lithocholic acids correlated well with a 30 per cent acceptability bias, supporting its use for decentralised bile acid profiling.
Comparison of six stool collection methods in healthy volunteers found OMNIgene Gut, FOBT cards, RNAlater and Microlution were reliable for metagenomics, whereas 95% ethanol best preserved metabolite profiles; the authors recommend using separate collection methods for different analytical aims in large population studies.
This study compared four stool collection methods for infant gut microbiome analysis via post and found that the OMNIgene•GUT kit showed the closest agreement with the frozen standard compared to swabs or plain tubes. The findings suggest that stabilised collection offers a viable decentralised solution for parents to sample infant stool at home with minimal DNA degradation.
FTA cards and OMNIgene GUT demonstrated strong concordance with immediate freezing for gut microbiome diversity and short-chain fatty acid measurements, while ethanol preserved the most metabolites overall. These stabilised collection methods enable reliable, decentralised stool sampling for large-scale microbiome and metabolomics studies.