Skip to main content

Abstract

The human genetic sequence database contains DNA sequences very like those of mycoplasma bacteria. It appears such bacteria infect not only molecular Biology laboratories but their genes were picked up from contaminated samples and inserted into GenBank as if they were homo sapiens. At least one mouldy EST (Expressed Sequence Tag) has transferred from online public databases on the Internet to commercial tools (Affymetrix HG-U133 plus 2.0 microarrays). We report a second example (DA466599) and suggest there is a need to clean up genomic databases but fear current tools will be inadequate to catch genes which have jumped the silicon barrier.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  1. Mendel, G.: Experiments in plant hybridization. Verhandlungen des naturforschenden Vereines in Brno (IV), 3–47 (1865); Translated by William Bateson

    Google Scholar 

  2. McClintock, B.: A cytological and genetical study of triploid maize. Genetics 14(2), 180–222 (1929)

    Google Scholar 

  3. Akiba, T., et al.: On the mechanism of the development of multiple-drug-resistant clones of Shigella. Japanese Journal of Microbiology 4, 219–227 (1960)

    Google Scholar 

  4. Aldecoa-Otalora, E., Langdon, W.B., Cunningham, P., Arno, M.J.: Unexpected presence of mycoplasma probes on human microarrays. BioTechniques 47(6), 1013–1016

    Google Scholar 

  5. McDaniel, L.D., et al.: High frequency of horizontal gene transfer in the oceans. Science 330(6000), 50 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Felsenfeld, A., et al.: Assessing the quality of the DNA sequence from the human genome project. Genome Research 9, 1–4 (1999)

    Google Scholar 

  7. Apweiler, R., et al.: Technical comment to “Database verification studies of SWISS-PROT and GenBank” by Karp et al. Bioinformatics 17(6), 533–534 (2001)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Langdon, W.B., Arno, M.J.: More mouldy data: Another mycoplasma gene jumps the silicon barrier into the human genome. ArXiv e-prints (June 14, 2011)

    Google Scholar 

  9. Altschul, S.F., et al.: Gapped BLAST and PSI-BLAST a new generation of protein database search programs. Nucleic Acids Res. 25(17), 3389–3402 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. Kimura, K., et al.: Diversification of transcriptional modulation: Large-scale identification and characterization of putative alternative promoters of human genes. Genome Research 16, 55–65 (2006)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  11. Miller, C.J., et al.: Mycoplasma infection significantly alters microarray gene expression profiles. BioTechniques 35(4), 812–814 (2003)

    Google Scholar 

  12. Dawkins, R.: The Selfish Gene. Oxford University Press, Oxford (1976)

    Google Scholar 

  13. Rosenthal, D.: Keeping bits safe: How hard can it be? Commun. ACM 53, 47–55

    Google Scholar 

  14. Handley, M.: Why the internet only just works. BT Technology Journal 24(3)

    Google Scholar 

  15. Longo, M.S., et al.: Abundant human DNA contamination identified in non-primate genome databases. PLoS ONE 6(2), e16410 (2011)

    Article  MathSciNet  Google Scholar 

  16. Durbin, R.M., et al.: A map of human genome variation from population-scale sequencing. Nature 467(7319), 1061–1073 (2010)

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Langdon, W.B., Arno, M.J. (2012). In Silico Infection of the Human Genome. In: Giacobini, M., Vanneschi, L., Bush, W.S. (eds) Evolutionary Computation, Machine Learning and Data Mining in Bioinformatics. EvoBIO 2012. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 7246. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29066-4_22

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-29066-4_22

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-29065-7

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-29066-4

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics