DNA Extraction From Orthoptera Museum Specimens

DNA Extraction from Museum Specimens of Parasitic Hymenoptera

At the same time that molecular researchers are improving techniques to extract DNA from museum specimens, this increased demand for access to museum specimens has created tension between the need to preserve specimens for maintaining collections and morphological research and the desire to conduct molecular analyses. To address these concerns, we examined the suitability of non-invasive DNA ex...

Enhanced DNA extraction and PCR amplification of mitochondrial genes from formalin-fixed museum specimens.

Nondestructive DNA extraction method for mitochondrial DNA analyses of museum specimens.

Museum specimens have provided the material for a large proportion of ancient DNA studies conducted during the last 20 years. However, a major drawback of the genetic analyses is that the specimens investigated are usually damaged, as parts of skin, bone, or a tooth have to be removed for DNA extraction. To get around these limitations, we have developed a nondestructive extraction method for b...

Genomics and museum specimens.

Nearly 25 years ago, Allan Wilson and colleagues isolated DNA sequences from museum specimens of kangaroo rats (Dipodomys panamintinus) and compared these sequences with those from freshly collected animals (Thomas et al. 1990). The museum specimens had been collected up to 78 years earlier, so the two samples provided a direct temporal comparison of patterns of genetic variation. This was not ...

Extraction of ultrashort DNA molecules from herbarium specimens.

DNA extracted from herbarium specimens is highly fragmented; therefore, it is crucial to use extraction protocols that retrieve short DNA molecules. Improvements in extraction and DNA library preparation protocols for animal remains have allowed efficient retrieval of molecules shorter than 50 bp. Here, we applied these improvements to DNA extraction protocols for herbarium specimens and evalua...