ArticleNature ecology & evolution2023
Inadvertent human genomic bycatch and intentional capture raise beneficial applications and ethical concerns with environmental DNA.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed.
- From environmental DNA into actionable biodiversity data: Towards the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.The Journal of heredity · 2026Review
- Forensic Microbiomics and Trace Microbial Evidence: Molecular Innovations for Linking Suspects, Objects, and Environments.Microorganisms · 2026Review
- Environmental DNA (eDNA) from humans: Review of recent advancements and forensic implications.International journal of legal medicine · 2026Review
- Long-read nanopore shotgun metagenomic DNA sequencing for river biodiversity, wildlife, pollution, and environmental health monitoring.NAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2026Article
- Enabling global-scale nucleic acid repositories through versatile, scalable biochemical selection from room-temperature archives.Nature communications · 2026Article
- The Ecological Genome Project and the Promises of Ecogenomics for Society: Realising a Shared Vision as One Health.Bioethics · 2025Article
- Power and Limitations of Inferring Genetic Ancestry.Annals of human genetics · 2025Review
- nf-core/detaxizer: a benchmarking study for decontamination from human sequences.NAR genomics and bioinformatics · 2025Article
- Review
- Shotgun sequencing of airborne eDNA achieves rapid assessment of whole biomes, population genetics and genomic variation.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- From air to insight: the evolution of airborne DNA sequencing technologies.Microbiology (Reading, England) · 2025Review
- Review
- Forensic identification using airDNA: a preliminary study on the collection, isolation, amplification and sequencing of human DNA from air samples.Turkish journal of medical sciences · 2025Article
- Environmental DNA without borders : Let's embrace decentralised genomics to meet the UN's biodiversity targets.EMBO reports · 2024Article
- Article
- A contextual integrity approach to genomic information: what bioethics can learn from big data ethics.Medicine, health care, and philosophy · 2024Article
- Sediment DNA can revolutionize archaeology-if it is used the right way.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Genomics for monitoring and understanding species responses to global climate change.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2024Review
- Article
- Safely balancing a double-edged blade: identifying and mitigating emerging biosecurity risks in precision medicine.Frontiers in medicine · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors.
Funding
Abstract
The field of environmental DNA (eDNA) is advancing rapidly, yet human eDNA applications remain underutilized and underconsidered. Broader adoption of eDNA analysis will produce many well-recognized benefits for pathogen surveillance, biodiversity monitoring, endangered and invasive species detection, and population genetics. Here we show that deep-sequencing-based eDNA approaches capture genomic information from humans (Homo sapiens) just as readily as that from the intended target species. We term this phenomenon human genetic bycatch (HGB). Additionally, 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. We present evidence that human eDNA is readily detectable from 'wildlife' environmental samples as human genetic bycatch, demonstrate that identifiable human DNA can be intentionally recovered from human-focused environmental sampling and discuss the translational and ethical implications of such findings.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.