Hi Sophie.

For "clean and normal" sources like lab pure cultures, I have not found big differences among different kits, so I just buy the cheaper :)

Now, for enrichments, maybe should be better one based on mechanical lysis to break-up everything, as spore-containing bacteria can be there. The same is valid for soil.

In lab, we have got better results with MoBio PowerSoil kit for high-organic-matter soil, sand, sediments and cultured enrichments. It works excellent, good DNA quality and yield with little sample (250-500mg soil, 1-3mL culture).

Good luck!

The god old Phenol:Chloroform:Isoamyl alkohol combination always gives me good DNA yields, albeit paid for by a little more labour involved than in kits. If you need a standard protocol let me know. Otherwise I agree with Federico, we do use the exact same kit and get decent results, however as far as I remember they use a bead beating approach which will cause shearing of DNA, so long fragments are a no-go.

Hope it works out for you.

Cheers

Lars

Thanks both - very helpful indeed.