Ancient Microbiomes as Mirrored by DNA Extracted From Century-Old Herbarium Plants and Associated Soil.

ABSTRACT: Numerous specimens stored in natural history collections have been involuntarily preserved together with their associated microbiomes. We propose exploiting century-old soils occasionally found on the roots of herbarium plants to assess the diversity of ancient soil microbial communities originally associated with these plants. We extracted total DNA and sequenced libraries produced from rhizospheric soils and roots of four plants preserved in herbaria for more than 120 years in order to characterise the preservation and taxonomic diversity that can be recovered in such contexts. Extracted DNA displayed typical features of ancient DNA, with cytosine deamination at the ends of fragments predominantly shorter than 50 bp. When compared to extant microbiomes, herbarium microbial communities cl

SUBMITTER: Grasso G 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12415840 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature