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A team of researchers from the University of Florida has shown it is possible to collect human DNA from the air, sequence it, and match it to a specific person.
The team from the University of Florida's Whitney Laboratory for Marine Bioscience and Sea Turtle Hospital was collecting DNA samples from turtle footprints as part of a separate study when they discovered they were also finding human DNA in the sand and surrounding water.
They decided to study it further and collected DNA samples from several volunteers. The researchers then took samples from a 280-square-foot room at an animal clinic where the volunteers worked.
They recovered human DNA samples, DNA from the clinic animals, and animal viruses. The researchers were able to sequence the DNA and match it with the samples they previously obtained.
"These sequences recovered both the nuclear and mitochondrial regions of the human genome, which means that we can easily determine if a male or female (was) walking in the sun or (their) presence in a room depending on whether or not we sequenced the X or Y chromosome," David Duffy, a professor of wildlife disease genomics at the University of Florida, explained during a news briefing. "Using the mitochondrial genome, we were able to investigate the genetic ancestry of our samples."
The ability to identify DNA out of thin air can be helpful in many cases, such as trying to locate a missing person or track down a suspected criminal.
However, the new finding is concerning to privacy advocates, who are worried about how easy it could be to track somebody against their will.
"It is important to preserve human autonomy, dignity, and the right to self-determination over personal data. This is difficult if you can't ask those whose DNA may be collected in the environment (for permission) because there's probably no way to avoid losing DNA to the environment via skin, hair, and breath," Matthias Wienroth, a senior fellow studying social and ethical aspects of genetics, who was not involved in the research, told CNN in an email.