Correcting for Microbial Blooms in Fecal Samples during Room-Temperature Shipping

Abstract

In many microbiome studies, the necessity to store samples at room temperature (i.e., remote fieldwork) and the ability to ship samples without hazardous materials that require special handling training, such as ethanol (i.e., citizen science efforts), is paramount. However, although room-temperature storage for a few days has been shown not to obscure physiologically relevant microbiome differences between comparison groups, there are still changes in specific bacterial taxa, notably, in members of the class Gammaproteobacteria , that can make microbiome profiles difficult to interpret. Here we identify the most problematic taxa and show that removing sequences from just a few fast-growing taxa is sufficient to correct microbiome profiles.