Nondestructive DNA extraction method for mitochondrial DNA analyses of museum specimens
Open accessAbstract
Museum specimens have provided the material for a large proportion of ancient DNA studies conducted during the last 20 years. However, a major drawback of the genetic analyses is that the specimens investigated are usually damaged, as parts of skin, bone, or a tooth have to be removed for DNA extraction. To get around these limitations, we have developed a nondestructive extraction method for bone, tooth, and skin samples. We found that it is possible to amplify mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences up to at least 414 bp long from samples up to 164 years old. Using this method, almost 90% (35 of 40) of the investigated samples yielded amplifiable mtDNA. Moreover, we found that repeated extractions of the same samples allowed amplifications of the expected length for all samples at least three times and for some samples up to at least five times. Thus this method opens up the possibility to repeatedly use museum collections for mtDNA analyses without damaging the specimens and thus without reducing the value of irreplaceable collections for morphological analyses.
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Nondestructive extraction methods can be problematic if DNA preservation is poor or if surface contamination is high.
“However, these methods can be problematic if DNA preservation is poor or if surface contamination is high.”
From Successful enrichment and recovery of whole mitochondrial genomes from ancient human dental calculus (2016) · cites this paper as Rohland et al., 2004
The Results and discussion report comparatively low DNA yields and contaminating sequences, including storage-related sequences that fell from 18% of clones in the first extraction to none in later extractions. The section also says specimen preparation treatments may affect DNA quality. It does not establish that poor DNA preservation or high surface contamination specifically makes nondestructive extraction problematic. (LLM, conf=0.82)
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- Leonard, J.A., R.K.Wayne, and A.Cooper. 2000. Population genetics of ice age brown bears. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA97:1651–1654.
- Hadly, E.A., M.H.Kohn, J.A.Leonard, and R.K.Wayne. 1998. A genetic record of population isolation in pocket gophers during Holocene climatic change. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA95:6893–6896.
- Vigilant, L., M.Hofreiter, H.Siedel, and C.Boesch. 2001. Paternity and relatedness in wild chimpanzee communities. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA98:12890–12895.
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Successful enrichment and recovery of whole mitochondrial genomes from ancient human dental calculus
Ozga, A. T., Nieves‐Colón, M. A., Honap, T. P., Sankaranarayanan, K., Hofman, C. A., Milner, G. R., Lewis, C. M., Stone, A. C., & Warinner, C. (2016) · American Journal of Physical Anthropology · doi:10.1002/ajpa.22960 · Cited by 79 · see citing works
“Nondestructive extraction methods that do not damage sample structural integrity have been developed for the recovery of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA from museum and archaeological samples (Rohland et al., 2004; Bolnick et al., 2012; Hofreiter, 2012).”
- Authors
- Rohland, N., Siedel, H., & Hofreiter, M.
- Affiliations
- Max Planck Society (DE)
- Venue
- BioTechniques
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Published
- 2004-05
- Volume
- 36
- Issue
- 5
- Pages
- 814-821
- ISSN
- 0736-6205 (ISSN-L)
- 1940-9818
- OpenAlex
- W2109219506
- Cited by
- 183
- References
- 0
- Citations by year
- 2026: 13 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 10 · 2020: 9 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 9 · 2017: 6 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 9 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 13 · 2012: 5
- FWCI
- 3.39
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- BioTechniques (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
- Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics (submittedVersion)
- MPG.PuRe (Max Planck Society) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Forensic and Genetic Research
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Archeology › Paleopathology and ancient diseases
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Genetics › Genetic diversity and population structure
- Keywords
- mitochondrial DNA, museum specimens, ancient DNA, bone, teeth, skin, repeated extraction, DNA amplification, museum collections
- MeSH terms
- Animals, Archaeology, Base Sequence, Bone and Bones, Pan troglodytes, DNA, Mitochondrial, Chemical Fractionation, Molecular Sequence Data, Museums, Skin, Specimen Handling, Tooth, Polymerase Chain Reaction, Sequence Analysis, DNA, Gene Expression Profiling
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