Development and Evaluation of Mock Microbial Community Standards based on DNA Extractability from Bacteria

The complexities involved in 16S rRNA-based and metagenomics analysis methods pose significant challenges for standardization as bias can be introduced during DNA extraction, amplification, library preparation, sequencing, and bioinformatics analysis. One of the primary challenges in assay standardization is the limited availability of reference materials. To address this issue, we evaluated the use of two mock microbial communities in the form of lyophilized, whole-cell standards as full-process controls.