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Record W4416959470 · doi:10.1186/s13104-025-07503-w

Synthesized double stranded gene fragments are not suitable for qPCR endogenous control spike-ins

2025· article· en· W4416959470 on OpenAlexaff
Nathan Zeinstra, Tzitziki Loeza‐Quintana, Cameron J. Brown, Robert Hanner

Bibliographic record

VenueBMC Research Notes · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldEnvironmental Science
TopicEnvironmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Guelph
Fundersnot available
KeywordsEndogenyDNADNA extractionGeneFragment (logic)Polymerase chain reactionMatrix (chemical analysis)Negative control

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

OBJECTIVE: Quality control standards are paramount for eDNA methods to gain widespread acceptance. In targeted eDNA studies, there are three main stages: sample collection, DNA extraction, and amplification via PCR. During this process, positive controls that ensure procedural success and validate negative results are typically included only in the final PCR amplification stage of the workflow. To address this issue, we explored the possibility of using synthetic dsDNA gene fragment spike-ins as endogenous controls to monitor the success of the sample collection and DNA extraction phases of the workflow. We hypothesised that short fragments of assay-specific dsDNA would be suitable for an endogenous control to monitor method success. To test this, we spiked dsDNA into two matrices, river water and TE buffer, where we then filtered and extracted each matrix and assessed the recovery of the spike-in. RESULTS: Our findings concluded that common eDNA collection and extraction methodologies do not consistently capture and isolate dsDNA fragments as we were unable to recover any of the dsDNA spike-ins. Thus, such fragments are unsuitable for a pre-extraction endogenous control. Further, this suggests that similar size dsDNA fragments in the environment may be missed by filtration-based eDNA studies.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.001
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.001
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Observational · Consensus signal: Observational
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.314
Threshold uncertainty score0.964

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0010.001
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0000.000
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0010.001
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0010.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.177
GPT teacher head0.347
Teacher spread0.170 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designObservational
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations1
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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