Project description:Natural history museum specimens of historical honeybees have been successfully used to explore the genomic past of the honeybee, indicating fast and rapid changes between historical and modern specimens, possibly as a response to current challenges. In our study we explore a potential untapped archive from natural history collections - specimens of beeswax. We examine an Apis mellifera mellifera queen cell specimen from the 19th century. The intact and closed cell was analysed by X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) to reveal a perfectly preserved queen bee inside her cell. Subsequently, a micro-destructive approach was used to evaluate the possibility of protein extraction from the cell. Our results show that studies on specimens such as these provide valuable information about the past rearing of queens, their diet and development, which is relevant for understanding current honeybee behaviour. In addition we evaluate the feasibility of using historical beeswax as a biomolecular archive for ancient proteins to study honeybees.
2024-09-05 | PXD034106 | Pride
Project description:Genomics of historical museum collections clarifies species diversity in Cuban hutias (Capromys)
| PRJNA1133949 | ENA
Project description:Genome wide shotgun sequencing of uropeltid snakes from historical museum collections
| PRJNA879208 | ENA
Project description:Archival DNA from historical ethanol preserved museum specimens.
Project description:Viromes of sour and sweet cherry trees in Hungarian germ line collections were surveyed using small RNA HTS as an unbiased method. RNA from leaf samples of different cultivars were purified and used to produce seven pools from which small RNA HTS libraries were prepared. The sequenced reads were analyzed using bioinformatic methods to revel the presence of viruses in the samples. Presence of the viruses were validated using RT-PCR.
Project description:Formalin induces inter- and intra-molecular crosslinks within exposed cells. This cross-linking can be exploited to characterise chromatin state as in the FAIRE (Formaldehyde-Assisted Isolation of Regulatory Elements) and MNase (micrococcal nuclease) assays. Here, we optimised the FAIRE and MNase assays for application upon heavily-fixed tissues as is typically found in historical formalin-preserved museum specimens. We demonstrate these assays in formalin-fixed mouse specimens and compare the chromatin signatures to specimen-matched fresh tissues. We found that heavy formalin fixation modulates rather than eliminates signatures of differential chromatin accessibility and that these chromatin profiles are reproducible, tissue-specific and sex-specific in vertebrate specimens.
Project description:Recent advances in (meta)genomic methods have provided new opportunities to examine host-microbe-environment interactions in the human gut. While opportunities exist to extract DNA from freshly sourced colonic tissue there are potentially valuable sources of DNA from historical studies that might also be examined. We examined how four different tissue DNA extraction methods employed in past clinical trials might impact the recovery of microbial DNA from a colonic tissue sample as assessed using a custom designed phylogenetic microarray for human gut bacteria and archaebacteria. While all methods of DNA extraction produced similar phylogenetic profiles some extraction specific biases were also observed. Real time PCR analysis targeting several bacterial groups substantiated this observation. These data suggest that while the efficacy of different DNA extraction methods differs somewhat all the methods tested produce an accurate representation of microbial diversity. This suggests that DNA samples archived in biobanks should be suitable for retrospective analyses.
Project description:We report the application of an uscfDNA-oriented sequencing pipeline profiling the cell-free DNA populations in plasma. The uscfDNA sequencing pipeline include two uscfDNA-optimized extraction methods (QiaM and SPRI) and one control extraction method (QiaC). Final libraries are made with a single-stranded library prepartion kit. We generate genome-wide maps revealing the presence of an uscfDNA population (25-99bp) in addition to the mncfDNA (100-250bp).