Starter comment: This new technique uses glass beads to break the membranes of larger human cells in a sample, while maintaining the integrity of smaller bacterial cells. This allows the use of enzymes to wash away the human cell contents, leaving only bacterial cells when DNA testing is performed. The idea is to make clinical testing and characterization of human gut microbiome samples faster and more precise.

Link to study (pay walled): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41592-023-02025-4