The importance of negative controls with PCR and Sequencing

[biofilm2010]

So... I know this is probably the most stupid question one could have ever asked in this forum but can someone please explain to me

WHY IS THE ADDITION OF A NEGATIVE CONTROL FOR SEQUENCING so important?

I did sequnecing and I understand the principle of it but not why the negative control is so important?

please help??


ps: I hope I got the right forum.....

[SebaQ]

To tell you the truth, I never knew you had to add a negative control during sequencing :S It doesn't make any sense to me at all, no matter how many times I think it.

[biofilm2010]

hmm.. the thing is that you should use a negative control in almost all PCRs right?

So.. if you first do a PCR, then purify the samples from all nucleotides, primers, etc that are just a contamination of the pure DNA you want to sequence it somehow makes sense to me to do a negative control to rule out possible contamination so that.. one could define the sequence of the other samples and IDK... substract the "wrong" data???

idk.. I only know that my professor insists on negative controls and I'm pretty sure it is one of the main questions on my exam next week.

Thanks for your help though......