Air is full of DNA
nature.com79 points by howrude 2 days ago
79 points by howrude 2 days ago
buried the lede, imho: we have enough DNA profiles to match their sampling up with.
I'm always stunned when reminded that a full genome sequencing has gone from Human Genome Project's extreme cost and (edit: glacial) speed to using seqencing as the easy button.
I hear we've also got machines that'll seqence, fit on a bench, and cost high five/low six figures. They've got issues to work out still though- iirc something about damaged sections causing issues.
four figures these days. fits in your hand. nanopore is a revolution. https://nanoporetech.com/products/sequence/minion
there’s youtubers that have videos about doing this in a home wetlab. very achievable. some amateur soil biologists using this to try and sample microdiversity as the planet… humanifies.
I was chatting with a biologist friend a while back, and one tidbit he dropped in was that any sample of air from anywhere on earth will likely contain the dna of organisms unknown to science, so abundant the tree of life is.
[stub for offtopicness]
> Scratch your head and you’ll release DNA-rich cellular material into the air. There, it will mingle with DNA from myriad other sources: your own and others’ exhalations and exfoliations, fragments of hair, feathers, excrement, pollen and spores, and microorganisms such as viruses and microalgae. This DNA, which can include segments that are tens of thousands of base pairs long, will then wander the air for perhaps a few days, often clinging to dust particles. It can travel distances that range from a few metres to several thousand.
Cool.
I think they had to delete all the sequencing data from the Wuhan Institute of Virology so stuff in the air wouldn't show up.
That was never a convincing argument, IMO. Just as US institutes would claim that China is responsible, by the same token the argument works on any other lab too - yet the media did not present in that way. Ever. That's not accurate reporting; that's an attempt at victim blaming. Next thing someone may do is give a powerpoint presentation about weapons of mass destruction in some far-away country ...
>Just as US institutes would claim that China is responsible, by the same token the argument works on any other lab too - yet the media did not present in that way. Ever. That's not accurate reporting; that's an attempt at victim blaming.