Bandelt Hans-Jürgen
Fachbereich Mathematik, Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany.
Eur J Hum Genet. 2005 Oct;13(10):1106-12. doi: 10.1038/sj.ejhg.5201476.
Research into ancient mitochondrial DNA is plagued by contamination, post mortem damage, and other artefacts. The stringent set of controls suggested by Cooper and Poinar a few years ago are, however, rarely followed in practice, and even when applied carefully, these criteria need not be sufficient to guarantee authenticity. The fairly relaxed prerequisites now common for ancient population studies have opened the door for all kinds of contamination and sequencing errors to enter ancient mtDNA data. To reject or question authenticity of particular sequencing results a posteriori, one can follow similar strategies of focused database comparisons that have proven to be effective and successful in the case of flawed modern mtDNA data.
对古代线粒体DNA的研究受到污染、死后损伤及其他人为因素的困扰。然而，几年前库珀和波伊纳尔提出的一系列严格对照措施在实际操作中很少被遵循，即便谨慎应用，这些标准也未必足以确保数据的真实性。目前古代群体研究中普遍采用的相对宽松的前提条件，为各类污染和测序错误进入古代线粒体DNA数据敞开了大门。为了事后拒绝或质疑特定测序结果的真实性，可以采用类似的聚焦数据库比对策略，这些策略在处理有缺陷的现代线粒体DNA数据时已被证明是有效且成功的。
