The article describes a method that increases throughput while balancing effort and accuracy for extraction of lipids from the cell membranes of microorganisms for use in characterizing both total lipids and the relative abundance of indicator lipids to determine soil microbial community structure in studies with many samples.
Oates, L. G., Read, H. W., Gutknecht, J. L. M., Duncan, D. S., Balser, T. B., Jackson, R. D. A Lipid Extraction and Analysis Method for Characterizing Soil Microbes in Experiments with Many Samples. J. Vis. Exp. (125), e55310, doi:10.3791/55310 (2017).