Nucleic acid extraction:
Total nucleic acid was extracted from 55 µl of each sample (cell culture
supernatant, nasal and oral swabs, serum, whole blood or 10% tissue
suspensions) using 5X MagMAXTM Pathogen RNA/DNA Kit on
a MagMAX™ Express-96 Deep well magnetic particle processor (Applied
Biosystems™) following manufacturer’s protocol. The nucleic acid was
eluted in 50 µl of elution buffer. The MagMAX-96 magnetic particle
processor was used to extract samples per appropriate script for the
sample volume tested.