Background: The availability of fresh stool samples is a prerequisite in most gut microbiota functional studies. Objective: Strategies for amplification and long-term gut microbiota preservation from fecal samples would favor sample sharing, help comparisons and reproducibility over time and between laboratories, and improve the safety and ethical issues surrounding fecal microbiota transplanta...

Biobanks play a crucial role in "-Omics" research providing well-annotated samples to study major diseases, their pathways and mechanisms. Accordingly, there are major efforts worldwide to professionalize biobanks in order to provide high quality preservation and storage of biological samples with potentially greater scientific impact. Biobanks are an important resource to elucidate relevant di...

Many biological species are threatened with extinction because of a number of factors such as climate change and habitat loss, and their preservation depends on an accurate understanding of the extent of their genetic variability within and among populations. In this study, we assessed the genetic divergence of five quantitative traits in 10 populations of an endangered cruciferous species, Boe...

JOHN QUIGGIN Department of Economics James Cook University People express concern about the possible extinction of animal species which they will never see, about damage to wilderness areas they will never visit, and so on. Such concerns are often interpreted by economists in terms of ‘existence’ or ‘passive use’ values. Three views have been proposed regarding the appropriate way of dealing wi...

To determine the effect of environmental factors on the preservation of DNA, archeological teeth of approximately similar age but greatly differing site milieu were examined for DNA content. The complex relational system of locational milieu of the samples was reduced to its essential and, at the same time, easily measurable factors. These are temperature, humidity, pH value, the geochemical pr...