MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort

Impact of Pre-Extraction Methods on Apple Blossom Microbiome Analysis

2025· article· en· W4409558016 on OpenAlexafffund
Nikhil Patel, Jonathan R. Gaiero, Mikhail G. Sulman, Paul E. Moote, Darlene Nesbitt, Antonet M. Svircev, Walid Ellouze

Bibliographic record

VenueMicroorganisms · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldBiochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology
TopicPlant Pathogens and Fungal Diseases
Canadian institutionsBrock UniversityAgriculture and Agri-Food Canada
FundersAgriculture and Agri-Food Canada
KeywordsSonicationBiologyDNA extractionExtraction (chemistry)MicrobiomeBacteriaMicrobiologyNucleic acidMicrobial population biologyFood scienceChromatographyChemistryBiochemistryPolymerase chain reactionBioinformaticsGenetics

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

This study examines the effect of pre-extraction methods, namely, sonication, grinding, and lyophilization, and the use of peptide nucleic acid (PNA) blockers on the DNA recovery, diversity, and taxonomic resolution of bacterial and fungal communities in apple blossoms. Sonication was the most successful in recovering bacterial 16S and fungal ITS reads across all the collection points and plots. Lyophilization and grinding led to a significant reduction in fungal read counts, while PNA enhanced the recovery of bacterial 16S reads. Sonication improved the efficiency of DNA extraction and yielded greater diversity in the recovered microbial community. Sonicated samples showed greater sensitivity to temporal shifts in microbial community composition. Communities in sonicated samples contained a larger number of bacterial genera, such as Bacillus, Staphylococcus, and Erwinia, and fungal genera, including Didymellaceae and Cladosporium. In contrast, lyophilization and grinding led to a reduction in detected taxa. The indicator species analysis determined that 35 bacterial and 21 fungal genera were closely related to sonication, whereas no other pre-extraction method had any associated genera. Our findings suggest that sonication is the most appropriate pre-extraction method for analyzing blossom-associated microbiomes, and that the use of PNA blockers can improve the recovery of bacteria and minimize contamination by host DNA.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.005
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Bench or experimental · Consensus signal: Bench or experimental
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.003
Threshold uncertainty score0.015

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.005
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0010.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0010.001
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0010.001
Open science0.0000.001
Research integrity0.0010.001
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.006
GPT teacher head0.329
Teacher spread0.323 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designBench or experimental
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueMicroorganismsSame topicPlant Pathogens and Fungal DiseasesFrench-language works237,207