The advent of the ‘next’ generation of DNA sequencing platforms has had a profound influence on our ability to sequence DNA. Arguably, the field that has gained most from these advances is ancient DNA (aDNA); whereas once scraping out a few hundred bases of mtDNA was an achievement, now whole genomes are sequenced off aDNA templates. This presentation will, using AustralAsia examples, showcase how NGS technologies have advanced our understanding of archaeology and paleontology, and discuss how lessons learnt from working with degraded DNA is now contributing more widely into the fields of forensics, conservation biology and medical research.

 The Trace and Environmental DNA (TrEnD) laboratory has, in recent years, used NGS metabarcoding (amplicon sequencing) to investigate the applicability of the approach to characterise a variety of complex (multi-species) substrates including herbal medicines, sediment, excavated bulk-bone and faecal/gut samples. While NGS technologies are a powerful tool, our data suggests that careful consideration of work practices including; template input, contamination control, library generation and data analysis, is necessary to obtain data sets free of artifacts.