Reply to Just et al.: Mitochondrial DNA heteroplasmy could be reliably detected with massively parallel sequencing technologies

In their comment on our report (1), Just et al. suggest that sample contamination explained mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) heteroplasmy identified in some individuals (2). The authors further question the validity of our conclusions and the reliability of using massively parallel sequencing (MPS) to detect low-frequency heteroplasmy. We systematically evaluated the presence and impact of contamination and found that it only affects a small fraction of all individuals, leaving our original conclusions unchanged.