Many species of beetles are known world-wide to be pests causing damage to stored food products and crops. One of the most common studied species of beetles is the Tenebrio molitor, also known as the meal worm beetle. T. molitor’s larvae are a common food source to a variety of captive animals, like reptiles, and a possible protein source for humans. T. molitor is used in a variety of scientific applications. It is one of the easiest species of beetles to study due to its size and ease of handling. Due to similar biological processes of other organisms in the Tenebrio genera, T. molitor is a model organism for studying population control and food safety. Typically, insect DNA extraction requires a chemical digestion that can be time consuming due to a long incubation lysis period which can take overnight. Another extraction method that is commonly used is dry grinding with a mortar and pestle, but limits processing to one sample at a time. Bead-mill homogenizers, like the Omni Bead Ruptor 4, allow fast and efficient disruption of multiple samples to extract analytes like nucleic acids or proteins. High-speed shaking of the sample in a tube with small beads allows processing in less amount of time than traditional methods.
In this study, we demonstrate an extraction method for DNA from T. molitor using the Omni Bead Ruptor 4 bead mill homogenizer. Extraction efficiency and analyte integrity were evaluated.
Table 2: Average DNA concentrations of each sample