Evaluation of high molecular weight DNA extraction methods for long-read sequencing of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli

Next generation sequencing has become essential for pathogen characterization and typing. The most popular second generation sequencing technique produces data of high quality with very low error rates and high depths. One major drawback of this technique is the short reads. Indeed, short-read sequencing data of Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) are difficult to assemble because of the presence of numerous mobile genetic elements (MGEs), which contain repeated elements. The resulting draft assemblies are often highly fragmented, which results in a loss of information, especially concerning MGEs or large structural variations. The use of long-read sequencing can circumvent these problems and produce complete or nearly complete genomes. The ONT MinION, for its small size and minimal investment requirements, is particularly popular. The ultra-long reads generated with the MinION can easily span prophages and repeat regions. In order to take full advantage of this technology it requires High Molecular Weight (HMW) DNA of high quality in high quantity. In this study, we have tested three different extraction methods: bead-based, solid-phase and salting-out, and evaluated their impact on STEC DNA yield, quality and integrity as well as performance in MinION long-read sequencing. Both the bead-based and salting-out methods allowed the recovery of large quantities of HMW STEC DNA suitable for MinION library preparation. The DNA extracted using the salting-out method consistently produced longer reads in the subsequent MinION runs, compared with the bead-based methods. While both methods performed similarly in subsequent STEC genome assembly, DNA extraction based on salting-out appeared to be the overall best method to produce high quantity of pure HMW STEC DNA for MinION sequencing.