PCR-based community structure studies of bacteria associated with eukaryotic organisms: a simple PCR strategy to avoid co-amplification of eukaryotic DNA.

PCR primers targeting conserved regions of the SSU rRNA gene are commonly used in bacterial community studies. For microbes associated with eukaryotes, co-amplification of eukaryotic DNA may preclude the analysis. We present a simple and efficient PCR strategy to obtain pure bacterial rDNA amplicons from samples predominated by eukaryotic DNA.