Dr. David Duffy, Assistant Professor of Wildlife Disease Genomics, and his lab’s Nature Ecology and Evolution paper published

Title: Inadvertent human genomic bycatch and intentional capture raise beneficial applications and ethical concerns with environmental DNA

The paper outlines the relative ease of collecting human DNA nearly everywhere they looked.
“We’ve been consistently surprised throughout this project at how much human DNA we find and the quality of that DNA,” Duffy said. “In most cases the quality is almost equivalent to if you took a sample from a person.”

Now, scientists and regulators must grapple with the ethical dilemmas inherent in accidentally — or intentionally — sweeping up human genetic information, not from blood samples but from a scoop of sand, a vial of water or a person’s breath.

Link to publication: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41559-023-02056-2 (opens in new tab)

Links to additional media outlets:

UF News – https://news.ufl.edu/2023/05/human-dna-everywhere-ethics/ (opens in new tab)
NY Times – https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/15/science/environmental-dna-ethics-privacy.html (opens in new tab)
CNN – https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/15/health/human-dna-captured-from-air-scn/index.html (opens in new tab)
The Conversation – https://theconversation.com/you-shed-dna-everywhere-you-go-trace-samples-in-the-water-sand-and-air-are-enough-to-identify-who-you-are-raising-ethical-questions-about-privacy-205557 (opens in new tab)
Science – https://www.science.org/content/article/privacy-concerns-sparked-human-dna-accidentally-collected-studies-other-species (opens in new tab)
BBC Science Focus – https://www.sciencefocus.com/news/e-dna-privacy-concern/ (opens in new tab)