Diverse and widespread contamination evident in the unmapped depths of high throughput sequencing data.

ABSTRACT: Trace quantities of contaminating DNA are widespread in the laboratory environment, but their presence has received little attention in the context of high throughput sequencing. This issue is highlighted by recent works that have rested controversial claims upon sequencing data that appear to support the presence of unexpected exogenous species. I used reads that preferentially aligned to alternate genomes to infer the distribution of potential contaminant species in a set of independent sequencing experiments. I confirmed that dilute samples are more exposed to contaminating DNA, and, focusing on four single-cell sequencing experiments, found that these contaminants appear to originate from a wide diversity of clades. Although negative control libraries prepared from 'blank' samples reco

SUBMITTER: Lusk RW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4213012 | biostudies-literature | 2014

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature