DNeasy mericon Food Kit (50)

QIAGEN's DNeasy mericon Food Kit is designed to enable extraction of high-quality nucleic acids from a variety of raw and processed foods, while minimizing the carryover of PCR inhibitors from these complex food matrices. The kit forms part of the comprehensive QIAGEN food testing portfolio, which also features assays for pathogen and GMO DNA detection and ingredient authentication. The procedure can be fully automated on the QIAcube Connect.

The kit uses improved cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) extraction of total cellular nucleic acids. CTAB is widely used for efficient extraction of total cellular nucleic acids from a wide range of tissue types. Depending on the salt conditions, CTAB may complex with cellular nucleic acids under low-salt conditions, or with cellular inhibitors such as polysaccharides, proteins, and plant metabolites under high-salt conditions, as found in the Food Lysis Buffer.

With fewer workflow steps than conventional CTAB protocols, up to 30 samples can be processed in 2.5 hours. The optimized protocols combine CTAB with Proteinase K to first digest compact tissue and then precipitate proteins alongside other cellular and food-derived inhibitors. Inhibitors are precipitated by centrifugation, while the extracted DNA remains in solution. In the subsequent chloroform extraction, any remaining CTAB-protein, CTAB-debris, or CTAB-polysaccharide complex not precipitated is removed together with other lipophilic inhibitors by extraction into the organic chloroform phase. Only the aqueous phase containing the DNA and significantly depleted inhibitors is processed further. This phase is mixed with binding buffer to adjust binding conditions and applied to QIAquick Spin Columns. The resulting DNA is immediately ready for use in a downstream mericon real-time PCR assay.