Isolation of High Molecular Weight DNA from Insects

: Isolation of high molecular weight (HMW) DNA from any organism can be daunting and populations of extremely small insects with hard exoskeletons are no exception. It can be challenging to isolate DNA that is clean enough to enzymatically label, digest or otherwise manipulate without sacrificing length. The method described here was originally developed to isolate HMW DNA for BAC library construction. More recently, it has proven reliable for long range optical mapping as well.