Evidence map›Paper›PMID 42121356›Full record

ArticleG3 (Bethesda, Md.)2026

CHARON: estimating the drift time and the number of individuals in environmental DNA with diploid individuals.

Jan van Waaij, Mads Vodder Hartmann, Peter Wad Sackett, Gabriel Renaud

Abstract read
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Article in G3 (Bethesda, Md.), 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

4 authors.

Jan van WaaijDepartment of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark, Ørsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark.ORCID 0000-0001-8738-5377
Mads Vodder HartmannDepartment of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark, Ørsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark.
Peter Wad SackettDepartment of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark, Ørsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark.
Gabriel RenaudDepartment of Health Technology, Section for Bioinformatics, Technical University of Denmark, Ørsteds Plads, Building 345C, Kongens Lyngby DK-2800, Denmark.ORCID 0000-0002-0630-027X

Funding

Department of Health Technology at the Technical University of DenmarkNovo Nordisk Data Science Investigator
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Environmental DNA (eDNA) offers a promising avenue for reconstructing the genetic diversity and demographic history of ancient populations. However, the analysis of eDNA from humans or forensic DNA, presents significant challenges, including low coverage, DNA degradation, and the uncertainty of the number of individuals contributing to a sample. This study introduces CHARON, a novel statistical method for jointly estimating the number of individuals and drift times between a human eDNA or forensic sample and a given population with known allele frequencies. We validate our method through simulations and synthetic empirical data and show that we can reliably estimate the number of individuals up to 8 at a coverage between 2X and 4X. Our method can also pinpoint the most likely population of origin for eDNA or forensic samples. This work provides a tool for the application of human eDNA in evolutionary and forensic studies and an implementation is available here: https://github.com/Jan-van-Waaij/Charon.

Indexed as

DiploidyDNA, EnvironmentalGenetic DriftSoftwareComputer SimulationGene FrequencyGenetics, PopulationHumansModels, GeneticDNA, Environmentaldrift estimationeDNAnumber of individuals

Identifiers

PMID42121356
PMCPMC13334185

What OpenQuestion holds

Textmetadata
LicenceCC BY
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.