Extraction of nucleic acids from samples
HT
STERILE
Each paper point was rehydrated in 0.3 ml of sterile RNase-free water and immediately vortexed 3 times for 30 s to detach nucleic acids. Then DNA and RNA were extracted from each sample by using the automatic Maxwell CSC Platform equipped with the HT Viral TNA kit (Promega, Madison, WI, USA), following the manufacturer’s instructions. Quality and concentration of extracted nucleic acids were assessed by spectrophotometric reading by using a Nanodrop at 260/280-nm wavelength (Thermo Fisher Scientific, Milan, Italy). The amplificability of extracted DNA was checked by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of bacterial 16S rRNA gene (pan-bacterial PCR, panB), as previously described[