Development of a standardized approach for environmental microbiota investigations related to asthma development in children

► Provide guidelines for standardized microbiome-based studies of house dust. ► DNA yield, 16S rRNA dose response and assay reproducibility were tested. ► Pilot study revealed hierarchy in community composition concordance. ► Least community variability between technical replicates, greatest between rooms from different houses. ► 454-Pyrosequencing verified bacteria detected by phylogenetic microarray.