TIME to run a tighter ship? Up to 18 per cent of the genomes sequenced so far seem to be contaminated with human DNA, likely because of lax lab practices.
and colleagues at the University of Connecticut in Storrs went through 2749 genomes, including bacteria, viruses, plants and animals. They found that 492 were similar in one respect: they contained a snippet of human DNA called AluY.
Only the influenza genomes were completely clean, probably because there are stringent protocols in place for handling infectious diseases ().
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O鈥橬eill did not look at the human genome, but she says it may also have been contaminated with DNA from lab workers. She thinks lab practices will have to become tighter, particularly for projects designed to scan people鈥檚 genomes for sequences that affect disease. 鈥淵ou wouldn鈥檛 want to be told that you had a sequence that gives a high risk of cancer when in fact you didn鈥檛,鈥� O鈥橬eill says.
