DNA Based Methods in Intelligence - Moving Towards Metagenomics
How to cite: Mason-Buck, G.; Graf, A.; Elhaik, E.; Robinson, J.; Pospiech, E.; Oliveira, M.; Moser, J.; Lee, P.K.H.; Githae, D.; Ballard, D.; Bromberg, Y.; Casimiro-Soriguer, C.S.; Dhungel, E.; Ahn, T.; Kawulok, J.; Loucera, C.; Ryan, F.; Walker, A.R.; Zhu, C.; Mason, C.E.; Amorim, A.; Syndercombe Court, D.; Branicki, W.; Labaj, P. DNA Based Methods in Intelligence - Moving Towards Metagenomics. Preprints 2020, 2020020158 Mason-Buck, G.; Graf, A.; Elhaik, E.; Robinson, J.; Pospiech, E.; Oliveira, M.; Moser, J.; Lee, P.K.H.; Githae, D.; Ballard, D.; Bromberg, Y.; Casimiro-Soriguer, C.S.; Dhungel, E.; Ahn, T.; Kawulok, J.; Loucera, C.; Ryan, F.; Walker, A.R.; Zhu, C.; Mason, C.E.; Amorim, A.; Syndercombe Court, D.; Branicki, W.; Labaj, P. DNA Based Methods in Intelligence - Moving Towards Metagenomics. Preprints 2020, 2020020158
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Commenter:
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
You cite two papers (Elhaik et al 2014 and Marshall et al 2017) which appear to testify to its efficacy. However, the methodology behind the Geographical Population Structure tool was critiqued by Flegontov et al in 2017. A further critique of this method was published by Dr Andrew Millard. These limitations really need to be highlighted.
There is a reference on page 8 to a GPS Origins test which is marketed by the commercial company Home DNA and this test is cited as reference 73. Concerns about the results obtained from the GPS Origins tests were highlighted in the Radio 4 programme The Business of Genetic Ancestry. See also this review from PC World. In view of the severe limitations of this test it would seem inappropriate to reference it in an academic paper.
The use of ancestry informative markers is now somewhat dated. It would be helpful to highlight in the paper more advanced haplotype-based methods of ancestry inference. See for example
Cheung 2019 Gilbert et al 2017 Han et al 2017 Winney et al 2015.
Commenter: Gabriella Mason-Buck
The commenter has declared there is no conflict of interests.
Thank you for taking the time to read this preprint and make comments, we're glad you found it interesting.
The team have read through the suggested articles, thank you for including the links as this has been extremely helpful.
The aim of our paper is to have a balanced overview of the potential metagenomics has to the forensic process and to look at the current challenges the community is facing to implement the technique. We have taken your comments on-board and can see that there is some imbalance present within the aforementioned section. Therefore, we will make necessary changes to try to ensure balance is achieved across the paper before the final article is released.
Many thanks and best wishes,
Gabriella.