Environmental Targeted Locus (Loci). soil metagenome

High-throughput sequencing (HTS) technology has the potential to drastically improve resolution in forensic soil science compared to traditional approaches. However, robust soil DNA analysis relies on an accurate and reproducible representation of the biodiversity in a sample, which may be problematic if a limited quantity of material is available as is common in forensic cases. In this study, we applied HTS to varying masses of five soil types to assess the effect of soil mass on fungal DNA community profiles and the ability to differentiate between samples. Our results show that the soils could be successfully differentiated regardless of soil mass and found that reproducibility of DNA profiles from different sample sizes varied depending on soil texture. We also demonstrate that DNA profiles recovered from minimal soil quantities (50 mg) can provide valuable forensic evidence and soils can be sub-sampled for independent analysis, whilst maintaining a reliable soil DNA profile.