Mining museums for historical DNA: advances and challenges in museomics

2021/08/26 by Christopher J. Raxworthy, Brian Tilston Smith · 313 citations
Environmental Science · Earth and Planetary Sciences · Arts and Humanities · #Environmental DNA in Biodiversity Studies #Archaeological Research and Protection #Conservation Techniques and Studies #Evolutionary biology #Biology #Sampling (signal processing) #Data science #Computer science

paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.tree.2021.07.009

published in Trends in Ecology & Evolution 36(11), 1049-1060 (Elsevier BV)

openalex publication_date 2021/08/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Historical DNA (hDNA), obtained from museum and herbarium specimens, has yielded spectacular new insights into the history of organisms. This includes documenting historical genetic erosion and extinction, discovering species new to science, resolving evolutionary relationships, investigating epigenetic effects, and determining origins of infectious diseases. However, the development of best-practices in isolating, processing, and analyzing hDNA remain under-explored, due to the substantial diversity of specimen preparation types, tissue sources, archival ages, and collecting histories. Thus, for hDNA to reach its full potential, and justify the destructive sampling of the rarest specimens, more experimental work using time-series collections, and the development of improved methods to correct for data asymmetries and biases due to DNA degradation are required.

Citations

• DNA sequences from the quagga, an extinct member of the horse family
• Gourds afloat: a dated phylogeny reveals an Asian origin of the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae) and numerous oversea dispersal events
• Drastic population fluctuations explain the rapid extinction of the passenger pigeon
• The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing
• Retrieval of hundreds of nuclear loci from herbarium specimens
• Genome of the Tasmanian tiger provides insights into the evolution and demography of an extinct marsupial carnivore
• Historical Genomes Reveal the Genomic Consequences of Recent Population Decline in Eastern Gorillas
• Mitogenomics of historical type specimens of Australasian turtles: clarification of taxonomic confusion and old mitochondrial introgression
• The evolution of a tropical biodiversity hotspot
• Preserve a Voucher Specimen! The Critical Need for Integrating Natural History Collections in Infectious Disease Studies
• Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens
• Million-year-old DNA sheds light on the genomic history of mammoths
• Towards complete and error-free genome assemblies of all vertebrate species

Cited by

• Ancient DNA [wikipedia]

Related

• Evaluating the Molecular Potential and Interpretability of DNA in Historical Spirit Collection Media
• Patterns of aDNA damage through time and environments—lessons from herbarium specimens
• Developing the Protocol Infrastructure for DNA Sequencing Natural History Collections
• Museum Genomics
• Advancements and Challenges in Ancient DNA Research: Bridging the Global North–South Divide