I'd like to have your opinion on this subject. When publishing a paper or writing a report or thesis, if I refer to the DNA extracted from soil samples taken from a mesocosm experiment (i.e. containers filled with soil undergoing different hydrocarbon bioremediation treatments, kept outdoors at regular environmental conditions on the site of study, and sampled once a week during three months), should I say I extracted and sequenced to study the bacterial communities the total DNA from soil or that I extracted and sequenced the eDNA? Which one is the proper way to refer to it?
In my opinion eDNA is not a good term and I don't support it. In the internet age, when we see broad use of terms like eBusiness, eCommerce etc. hence, term eDNA is highly inaccurate. Further, if the samples are environmental samples, DNA extracted from that doesn't need to be specified as environmental DNA. Moreover, DNA cannot be environmental.
I guess this (eDNA) is just a fancy term invented by some people and is blindly used by a majority or researchers.
Further as you are asking about total DNA, I would say its impossible to get/extract total DNA from any sample.
Here I could just recommend, simply mention that samples were environmental samples and genomic DNA was extracted with xyz kit.
(Although, this answer will not help you now after almost a year, it might help someone with similar query.)
Thank you for your opinion! To wich I agree, mostly. I will avoid using the term eDNA ulness it is required by an editor or reviewer, or it is a consensus within the scientific community one day.
In my opinion, if you use a specific region of 16S to assign the taxonomy since you chose the region you Know if you will identify only bacteria oy bacteria, and archaea. However, if you use metagenomics approaches (shotgun sequence) you get all DNA present in the sample not only bacteria.
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