PCR artifacts
Chimeras are artifacts formed when fragments from different DNA molecules fuse into a single artificial hybrid sequence.
Chimeras are especially damaging in metagenomics and 16S work, where a hybrid sequence can be misread as a novel organism.
Size bias is the tendency of PCR to preferentially amplify shorter fragments, distorting the original fragment size distribution.
Recombination is the unintended shuffling of genetic material between fragments, often driven by over-amplification.
Primer dimers are artifacts formed when two primer molecules hybridize to each other instead of to the target DNA template.
Jackpotting is the runaway over-amplification of a few random fragments, which skews their representation in the sequencing data.
Adapter dimers are artifacts formed when two sequencing adapters ligate to each other instead of to a DNA insert.
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