Journal
PLOS ONE
Volume 6, Issue 2, Pages -Publisher
PUBLIC LIBRARY SCIENCE
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016410
Keywords
-
Categories
Funding
- NSF
- Div Of Biological Infrastructure
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0821466] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Div Of Molecular and Cellular Bioscience
- Direct For Biological Sciences [0758577] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
Ask authors/readers for more resources
During routine screens of the NCBI databases using human repetitive elements we discovered an unlikely level of nucleotide identity across a broad range of phyla. To ascertain whether databases containing DNA sequences, genome assemblies and trace archive reads were contaminated with human sequences, we performed an in depth search for sequences of human origin in non-human species. Using a primate specific SINE, AluY, we screened 2,749 non-primate public databases from NCBI, Ensembl, JGI, and UCSC and have found 492 to be contaminated with human sequence. These represent species ranging from bacteria (B. cereus) to plants (Z. mays) to fish (D. rerio) with examples found from most phyla. The identification of such extensive contamination of human sequence across databases and sequence types warrants caution among the sequencing community in future sequencing efforts, such as human re-sequencing. We discuss issues this may raise as well as present data that gives insight as to how this may be occurring.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available