fig1

Figure 1. Abundance of bacterial and human DNA in different biological samples with high content of eukaryotic DNA evaluated through qPCR. Panel (A) shows the absolute quantification of host DNA (light blue); and panel (B) indicates the corresponding absolute quantification of bacterial DNA (green) in saliva samples treated with different amounts of saponin compared to the untreated counterpart (dark gray). Each pillar represents the average quantity of human and bacterial DNA content ± standard deviation; panel (C) displays the absolute quantification of host DNA (light blue) in a vaginal, oral and nasopharyngeal swab treated with 2.5% wt/vol concentration of saponin and subsequently treated with DNase before proceeding with microbial DNA extraction using the best performing commercial kit; panel (D) shows the bacterial DNA (green) counterpart in vaginal, oral, and nasopharyngeal samples. Every pillar represents a biological sample treated with saponin (T) or its untreated counterpart (NT). The color scales (blue and green) at the top of panels (C) and (D) indicate the increase in the amount of human or bacterial DNA in the analyzed samples.