Performance of extraction methods for extracellular DNA from sediments across marine habitats

We used two extraction methods to assess if the amount of extracted DNA was different among three marine habitats; coral reefs, mangrove forests and seagrass meadows. First, an equal amount of DNA was added to sterilized sediment and there was no difference in the DNA extracted from the different habitats. Second, an equal amount of DNA from a species that did not occur naturally was added to the sediment and the number of sequenced reads of this species was not different among habitats. A concomitant test found that a commercial extraction kit, the MO-BIO PowerSoil DNA isolation kit, and published extraction protocol from Lever et al. (2015) had similar results. Although different environmental conditions within the habitats will likely affect the degradation of eDNA, these findings suggest that diverse characteristic of the sediments from different habitats does not affect the extraction of DNA. This is an important step in determining if eDNA within sediment can be utilized to compare the communities from different marine habitats.