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Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens

Centuries of zoological studies have amassed billions of specimens in collections worldwide. Genomics of these specimens promises to reinvigorate biodiversity research. However, because DNA degrades with age in historical specimens, it is a challenge to obtain genomic data for them and analyze degra...

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Autores principales: Cong, Qian, Shen, Jinhui, Zhang, Jing, Li, Wenlin, Kinch, Lisa N, Calhoun, John V, Warren, Andrew D, Grishin, Nick V
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Oxford University Press 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8097301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33502509
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab013
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author Cong, Qian
Shen, Jinhui
Zhang, Jing
Li, Wenlin
Kinch, Lisa N
Calhoun, John V
Warren, Andrew D
Grishin, Nick V
author_facet Cong, Qian
Shen, Jinhui
Zhang, Jing
Li, Wenlin
Kinch, Lisa N
Calhoun, John V
Warren, Andrew D
Grishin, Nick V
author_sort Cong, Qian
collection PubMed
description Centuries of zoological studies have amassed billions of specimens in collections worldwide. Genomics of these specimens promises to reinvigorate biodiversity research. However, because DNA degrades with age in historical specimens, it is a challenge to obtain genomic data for them and analyze degraded genomes. We developed experimental and computational protocols to overcome these challenges and applied our methods to resolve a series of long-standing controversies involving a group of butterflies. We deduced the geographical origins of several historical specimens of uncertain provenance that are at the heart of these debates. Here, genomics tackles one of the greatest problems in zoology: countless old specimens that serve as irreplaceable embodiments of species concepts cannot be confidently assigned to extant species or population due to the lack of diagnostic morphological features and clear documentation of the collection locality. The ability to determine where they were collected will resolve many on-going disputes. More broadly, we show the utility of applying genomics to historical museum specimens to delineate the boundaries of species and populations, and to hypothesize about genotypic determinants of phenotypic traits.
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spelling pubmed-80973012021-05-10 Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens Cong, Qian Shen, Jinhui Zhang, Jing Li, Wenlin Kinch, Lisa N Calhoun, John V Warren, Andrew D Grishin, Nick V Mol Biol Evol Methods Centuries of zoological studies have amassed billions of specimens in collections worldwide. Genomics of these specimens promises to reinvigorate biodiversity research. However, because DNA degrades with age in historical specimens, it is a challenge to obtain genomic data for them and analyze degraded genomes. We developed experimental and computational protocols to overcome these challenges and applied our methods to resolve a series of long-standing controversies involving a group of butterflies. We deduced the geographical origins of several historical specimens of uncertain provenance that are at the heart of these debates. Here, genomics tackles one of the greatest problems in zoology: countless old specimens that serve as irreplaceable embodiments of species concepts cannot be confidently assigned to extant species or population due to the lack of diagnostic morphological features and clear documentation of the collection locality. The ability to determine where they were collected will resolve many on-going disputes. More broadly, we show the utility of applying genomics to historical museum specimens to delineate the boundaries of species and populations, and to hypothesize about genotypic determinants of phenotypic traits. Oxford University Press 2021-01-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8097301/ /pubmed/33502509 http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab013 Text en © The Author(s) 2021. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Methods
Cong, Qian
Shen, Jinhui
Zhang, Jing
Li, Wenlin
Kinch, Lisa N
Calhoun, John V
Warren, Andrew D
Grishin, Nick V
Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens
title Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens
title_full Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens
title_fullStr Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens
title_full_unstemmed Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens
title_short Genomics Reveals the Origins of Historical Specimens
title_sort genomics reveals the origins of historical specimens
topic Methods
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8097301/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33502509
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msab013
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