Contamination benchmark using human-derived samples

The goal of this study was to characterize contamination and well-to-well leakage during processing and sequencing in different human-derived microbiome samples. The experiments compared different plate arrangements during processing, use of extraction and library preparation controls, intentional decontamination of some samples using a mock community, and the use of multiple replicates of the same sample across different experimental protocols. This study can be used to both characterize contamination and to evaluate in silico decontamination methods.