Fig. 3

Effects of buffers and storage conditions (time and temperatures) on the genome recovery of the spiked phages (Phi X174, c2, and T4) over 100-day storage. The percentages of phage genomic recovery (y-axis, log10 scale) were determined by qPCR at each different time point (x-axis). The error bars indicate the standard deviation with 3 replicates. The left panels (A, C, E) represent the temperatures of 25 °C (dotted lines) and 4 °C (solid lines) and the right panels (B, D, F) represent the temperatures − 20 °C (dotted lines) and − 80 °C (solid lines)