Unlocking the treasure trove: leveraging dry coral specimens for museum genomics

Abstract

Natural history museums house the largest biodiversity collections in the world and represent an enormous repository of genetic information. Much of this information, however, has remained inaccessible until recently. Emerging technologies, such as techniques for isolation of historical DNA (hDNA) and target enrichment sequencing of ultraconserved elements (UCEs) that can utilize degraded DNA as input material, have the potential to unlock museum collections for genomics research. Here, we demonstrate that hDNA extracted from dried Pocillopora coral specimens, collected up to 90 yrs ago, can be used as input for UCE target enrichment sequencing. The resulting sequence data can be used in phylogenetic studies to resolve questions about taxonomic species identities, biogeographic distributions, and evolutionary histories. Our results provide a blueprint for research groups seeking to take advantage of untapped genetic information stored in natural history museum collections.