DNase pretreatment of master mix reagents improves the validity of universal 16S rRNA gene PCR results.

DNase I pretreatment of 16S rRNA gene PCR reagents was tested. The DNase I requirement for the elimination of false-positive results varied between 0.1 and 70 IU per master mix depending on the applied Taq polymerase. PCR sensitivity was mostly maintained when 0.1 IU of DNase I was used.