False Negatives:

• Degraded DNA: Samples with significantly degraded DNA may lead to no species identification, resulting in false negatives.
• Low Abundance: Species present at very low levels (typically below 0.5% of all assigned reads) may not be detected or reported, even if they are present in the sample.

False Positives:

• High Sensitivity: NGS detects all successfully amplified DNA amplicons. Sequences with low abundance or unexpected lengths may be incorrectly identified due to PCR or sequencing errors.
• Filtering Process: To mitigate false positives, stringent bioinformatics filters are applied during data analysis.

Negative Controls:

• To reduce false positives, a negative control (sterile water) is analyzed alongside samples.