Science Daily May 15, 2023
The field of environmental DNA (eDNA) is advancing rapidly, yet human eDNA applications remain underutilized and under considered. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Florida, Spain) showed that deep-sequencing-based eDNA approaches capture genomic information from humans just as readily as that from the intended target species. They called it human genetic bycatch (HGB). The high-quality human eDNA could be intentionally recovered from environmental substrates (water, sand, and air), holding promise for beneficial medical, forensic, and environmental applications. However, this also raises ethical dilemmas, from consent, privacy, and surveillance to data ownership, requiring further consideration and potentially novel regulation. According to the researchers broader adoption of eDNA analysis will produce many well-recognized benefits for pathogen surveillance, biodiversity monitoring, endangered and invasive species detection, and population genetics… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Scientists collected high-quality DNA from footprints made by one of the researchers…Sequencing the DNA revealed identifiable information about the participant’s genome. Credit: David Duffy