Freeze-drying can replace cold-chains for transport and storage of fecal microbiome samples

Abstract

We found strong correlations between relative abundances of Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) between preservation treatments of the sample, no differences in alpha diversity measures between the two preservation treatments and minor effects of the preservation treatment on beta diversity measures. Our results show that freeze-drying samples can be a useful method for cost-effective transportation and storage of microbiome samples that yields quantitatively almost indistinguishable results in 16S microbiome analyses as those stored in minus 80 °C.