1001 Historical Drosophilidae Genomes

Why collaborate with us?

There are several reasons why curators of natural history collections might want to collaborate with us:

• We will generate three complementary resources for each specimen that will add value to a natural history collection: i) a high-coverage whole-genome sequence, publicly available at NCBI and linked to the museum voucher ii) we offer to send any remaining DNA back to the museum, for long-term storage and future collaborative research and iii) we aim to generate high resolution stacking photographs of each specimen prior to DNA extraction.
• We offer to perform the work on a collaborative basis, where researches from museums might be involved in collecting the samples, discussing the data and publishing the results.
• As the impact of human activity on insect genomes may captivate public interest, our work may lead to novel outreach opportunities.
• Our efforts will result in a valuable resource for posterity. The genomes of specimens sampled at different times during the last centuries can be used to address many diverse research questions ranging from taxonomy to recent adaptations (see aim).
• We utilize a minimally harmful protocol for DNA extraction that preservers the integrity of the specimens from the natural history collections (see Lab protocol). We do not extract DNA from type specimens or other valuable specimens. Instead we focus on species with many specimens.
• We have the proven competence to sequence the entire genomes of historical specimens (and not just some region) (see for example here). Furthermore we have experience collaborating with museums. The scientists who will be extracting the DNA have worked in museums for many years and are therefore experienced in the careful handling of specimens. Finally, our team includes experts in bioinformatics and genomics, so we know how to make use of the huge amount of data generated by the 1001HDG project.