caa a22 4500 445820888 CHVBK 20180317145243.0 cr unu---uuuuu 170323e20111001xx s 000 0 eng 10.1007/s00239-011-9474-z doi (NATIONALLICENCE)springer-10.1007/s00239-011-9474-z Evaluating the Impact of Post-Mortem Damage in Ancient DNA: A Theoretical Approach [Elektronische Daten] [Martyna Molak, Simon Ho] The growth of ancient DNA research has offered exceptional opportunities and raised great expectations, but has also presented some considerable challenges. One of the ongoing issues is the impact of post-mortem damage in DNA molecules. Nucleotide alterations and DNA strand breakages lead to a significant decrease in the quantity of DNA molecules of useful length in a sample and to errors in the final DNA sequences obtained. We present a model of age-dependent DNA damage and quantify the influence of that damage on subsequent steps in the sequencing process, including the polymerase chain reaction and cloning. Calculations using our model show that deposition conditions, rather than the age of a sample, have the greatest influence on the level of DNA damage. In turn, this affects the probability of interpreting an erroneous (possessing damage-derived mutations) sequence as being authentic. We also evaluated the effect of post-mortem damage on real data sets using a Bayesian phylogenetic approach. According to our study, damage-derived sequence alterations appear to have little impact on the final DNA sequences. This indicates the effectiveness of current methods for sequence authentication and validation. Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, 2011 Ancient DNA nationallicence Post-mortem damage nationallicence Miscoding lesions nationallicence Depurination nationallicence Cytosine deamination nationallicence Thermal age nationallicence Molak Martyna School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, Edgeworth David Building A11, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia aut Ho Simon School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, Edgeworth David Building A11, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia aut Journal of Molecular Evolution Springer-Verlag 73/3-4(2011-10-01), 244-255 0022-2844 73:3-4<244 2011 73 239 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-011-9474-z text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI 1 research-article jats NATIONALLICENCE 856 40 https://doi.org/10.1007/s00239-011-9474-z text/html Onlinezugriff via DOI NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Molak Martyna School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, Edgeworth David Building A11, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia aut NATIONALLICENCE 700 1- Ho Simon School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, Edgeworth David Building A11, 2006, Sydney, NSW, Australia aut NATIONALLICENCE 773 0- Journal of Molecular Evolution Springer-Verlag 73/3-4(2011-10-01), 244-255 0022-2844 73:3-4<244 2011 73 239 Metadata rights reserved Springer special CC-BY-NC licence nationallicence BK010053 XK010053 XK010000 NATIONALLICENCE NATIONALLICENCE NL-springer