Improving Species Identification of Ancient Mammals Based on Next-Generation Sequencing Data.

ABSTRACT: The taxonomical identification merely based on morphology is often difficult for ancient remains. Therefore, universal or specific PCR amplification followed by sequencing and BLAST (basic local alignment search tool) search has become the most frequently used genetic-based method for the species identification of biological samples, including ancient remains. However, it is challenging for these methods to process extremely ancient samples with severe DNA fragmentation and contamination. Here, we applied whole-genome sequencing data from 12 ancient samples with ages ranging from 2.7 to 700 kya to compare different mapping algorithms, and tested different reference databases, mapping similarities and query coverage to explore the best method and mapping parameters that can improve the accu

SUBMITTER: Lan TM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6679096 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature