Bead-beating artefacts in the Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes ratio of the human stool metagenome

We evaluated bead-beating cell-lysis in analysing the human stool metagenome, since this is a key step. We observed that two different bead-beating instruments from the same producer gave a three-fold difference in the Bacteroidetes to Firmicutes ratio. This illustrates that bead-beating can have a major impact on downstream metagenome analyses. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.