Abstract

Contamination from present-day DNA is a fundamental issue when studying ancient DNA from historical or archaeological material, and quantifying the amount of contamination is essential for downstream analyses. We present AuthentiCT, a command-line tool to estimate the proportion of present-day DNA contamination in ancient DNA datasets generated from single-stranded DNA libraries. The prediction is based solely on the patterns of post-mortem damage observed on ancient DNA sequences. The method has the power to quantify contamination from as few as 10,000 mapped sequences, making it particularly useful for analysing specimens that are poorly preserved or for which little data is available.

Details

Title
AuthentiCT: a model of ancient DNA damage to estimate the proportion of present-day DNA contamination
Author
Peyrégne, Stéphane  VIAFID ORCID Logo  ; Peter, Benjamin M
Pages
1-16
Section
Software
Publication year
2020
Publication date
2020
Publisher
BioMed Central
ISSN
14747596
e-ISSN
1474760X
Source type
Scholarly Journal
Language of publication
English
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13059-020-02123-y
ProQuest document ID
2444112233
Copyright
© 2020. This work is licensed under http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.