Contaminated genomes

More than 20 percent of non-primate genome sequences from the top public sequencing facilities are contaminated with human DNA, reports a linkurl:study;http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0016410 published today (February 16) in PLoS ONE.

A Sanger sequencing read Image: Wikimedia commons, Loris

This research calls for scientists to work harder to ensure that the genomes they're sequencing do not become contaminated during the sequencing process, and, more importantly, to check for potential contamination in genomes pulled from the public databases on which genomes are normally deposited. "Genome contamination is a big problem -- but it's not new," said linkurl:Jonathan Eisen,;http://bobcat.genomecenter.ucdavis.edu/mediawiki/index.php/Main_Page evolutionary biologist at the University of California, Davis and lead of the phylogenomics program at the United States Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute. "This paper might help remind people of this [issue]."Contamination can be introduced into a genomic sequence at any number of stages. It could be airborne bacteria landing in a sample,...