General description

Standardization of sample analysis is currently needed in microbiome genomics research workflow. Lack of standardization can lead to biases and errors in common processes during sample preparation and analysis such as sample amplification, sequencing and bioinformatics analyses. Enterococcus faecalis genomic DNA microbial standard can serve as standard for benchmarking the performance along the workflow of microbiomics or meta-genomics analyses and as a tool to increase reproducibility and allow comparison of results obtained by different labs. Enterococcus faecalis is a gram positive, facultative anaerobic, non-motile, coci-shaped bacterium. It is a commensal bacterium of the human intestine and a major opportunistic pathogen in immunocompromised and elderly patients. The pathogenesis of E. faecalis infection relies in part on its capacity to colonize the gut. Following disruption of intestinal homeostasis, E. faecalis can overgrow, cross the intestinal barrier, and enter the lymph and bloodstream. Isolates of E. faecalis that have ended up in strain collections, mainly from clinical infection sources, appear to have acquired resistance to tetracycline and chloramphenicol in the 1950s and 1960s, followed by gentamicin and erythromycin resistance in the 1970s, then ampicillin and vancomycin resistance in the 1980s and 1990s.