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Uncovering the genomic and metagenomic research potential in old ethanol-preserved snakes.

ABSTRACT: Natural history museum collections worldwide represent a tremendous resource of information on past and present biodiversity. Fish, reptiles, amphibians and many invertebrate collections have often been preserved in ethanol for decades or centuries and our knowledge on the genomic and metagenomic research potential of such material is limited. Here, we use ancient DNA protocols, combined with shotgun sequencing to test the molecular preservation in liver, skin and bone tissue from five old (1842 to 1964) museum specimens of the common garter snake (Thamnophis sirtalis). When mapping reads to a T. sirtalis reference genome, we find that the DNA molecules are highly damaged with short average sequence lengths (38-64 bp) and high C-T deamination, ranging from 9% to 21% at the first position. Despite this, the samples displayed relatively high endogenous DNA content, ranging from 26% to 56%, revealing that genome-scale analyses are indeed possible from all specimens and tissues included here. Of the three tested types of tissue, bone shows marginally but significantly higher DNA quality in these metrics. Though at least one of the snakes had been exposed to formalin, neither the concentration nor the quality of the obtained DNA was affected. Lastly, we demonstrate that these specimens display a diverse and tissue-specific microbial genetic profile, thus offering authentic metagenomic data despite being submerged in ethanol for many years. Our results emphasize that historical museum collections continue to offer an invaluable source of information in the era of genomics.

SUBMITTER: Zacho CM

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8382189 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:Agricultural crop breeding programs, particularly at the national level, typically consist of a core panel of elite breeding cultivars alongside a number of local landrace varieties (or other endemic cultivars) that provide additional sources of phenotypic and genomic variation or contribute as experimental materials (e.g., in GWAS studies). Three issues commonly arise. First, focusing primarily on core development accessions may mean that the potential contributions of landraces or other secondary accessions may be overlooked. Second, elite cultivars may accumulate deleterious alleles away from nontarget loci due to the strong effects of artificial selection. Finally, a tendency to focus solely on SNP-based methods may cause incomplete or erroneous identification of functional variants. In practice, integration of local breeding programs with findings from global database projects may be challenging. First, local GWAS experiments may only indicate useful functional variants according to the diversity of the experimental panel, while other potentially useful loci-identifiable at a global level-may remain undiscovered. Second, large-scale experiments such as GWAS may prove prohibitively costly or logistically challenging for some agencies. Here, we present a fully automated bioinformatics pipeline (riceExplorer) that can easily integrate local breeding program sequence data with international database resources, without relying on any phenotypic experimental procedure. It identifies associated functional haplotypes that may prove more robust in determining the genotypic determinants of desirable crop phenotypes. In brief, riceExplorer evaluates a global crop database (IRRI 3000 Rice Genomes) to identify haplotypes that are associated with extreme phenotypic variation at the global level and recorded in the database. It then examines which potentially useful variants are present in the local crop panel, before distinguishing between those that are already incorporated into the elite breeding accessions and those only found among secondary varieties (e.g., landraces). Results highlight the effectiveness of our pipeline, identifying potentially useful functional haplotypes across the genome that are absent from elite cultivars and found among landraces and other secondary varieties in our breeding program. riceExplorer can automatically conduct a full genome analysis and produces annotated graphical output of chromosomal maps, potential global diversity sources, and summary tables.

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Uncovering the genomic and metagenomic research potential in old ethanol-preserved snakes.

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