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Improving the sensitivity of negative controls in ancient DNA extractions
Author(s) -
Xu Zhi,
Zhang Fan,
Xu Bosong,
Tan Jingze,
Li Shilin,
Jin Li
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
electrophoresis
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.666
H-Index - 158
eISSN - 1522-2683
pISSN - 0173-0835
DOI - 10.1002/elps.200800473
Subject(s) - sensitivity (control systems) , dna , ancient dna , chromatography , computational biology , chemistry , biology , genetics , medicine , engineering , population , environmental health , electronic engineering
Much attention has been paid on ancient DNA (aDNA) studies, and negative control was used as one of the stringent quality assurance criteria in order to detect potential contamination. However, the results of some aDNA studies showed the evidence of contamination despite their negative controls failed to do so. Using λ DNA to mock extraneous contaminating DNA, our study showed that aDNA had a property of improving the efficiency of extraction including contaminating DNA, while negative controls had low sensitivity to detect contamination. To circumvent this problem, carrier DNA such as poly(dA) is suggested to be introduced into aDNA extraction.