Traditional Chinese medicine （TCM） clinical practice. So far, the methods commonly preparations are widely used for healthcare and used for quality evaluation of TCM preparations mainly focused on chemical ingredients. The biological ingredient analysis of TCM preparations is also important because TCM preparations usually contain both plant and animal ingredients, which often include some mis-identified herbal materials, adulterants or even some biological contaminants. For biological ingredient analysis, the efficiency of DNA extraction is an important factor which might affect the accuracy and reliability of identification. The component complexity in TCM preparations is high, and DNA might be destroyed or degraded in different degrees after a series of processing procedures. Therefore, it is necessary to establish an effective protocol for DNA extraction from TCM preparations. In this study, we chose a classical TCM preparation, Liuwei Dihuang Wan （LDW）, as an example to develop a TCM-specific DNA extraction method. An optimized cetyl trimethyl ammonium bromide （CTAB） method （TCM-CTAB） and three commonly-used extraction kits were tested for extraction of DNA from LDW samples. Experimental results indicated that DNA with the highest purity and concentration was obtained by using TCM-CTAB. To further evaluate the different extraction methods, amplification of the second internal transcribed spacer （ITS2） and the chloroplast genome trnL intron was carried out.
Xinwei ChengXiaohua ChenXiaoquan SuHuanxin ZhaoMaozhen HanCunpei BoJian XuHong BaiKang Ning
Method development has always been and will continue to be a core driving force of microbiome science, In this perspective, we argue that in the next decade, method development in microbiome analysis will be driven by three key changes in both ways of thinking and technological platforms： ① a shift from dissecting microbiota structure by sequencing to tracking microbiota state, function, and intercellular interaction via imaging; ② a shift from interrogating a consortium or population of cells to probing individual cells; and ③a shift from microbiome data analysis to microbiome data science. Some of the recent methoddevelopment efforts by Chinese microbiome scientists and their international collaborators that underlie these technological trends are highlighted here. It is our belief that the China Microbiome Initiative has the opportunity to deliver outstanding ＂Made-in-China＂ tools to the international research community, by building an ambitious, competitive, and collaborative program at the forefront of method development for microbiome science.
