Transfer of Genetic Resources into Ultra-Cold Storage at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences

大多数生物多样性研究项目现在使用生物分子(DNA和RNA)来帮助识别、确定进化关系或研究物种的种群生物学。为了满足这一需求，美国东南部最大的自然历史博物馆北卡罗来纳州自然科学博物馆经常以从凭证标本中提取的组织样本的形式保存生物分子。这些藏品包括许多种类的脊椎动物和水生无脊椎动物的组织，包括稀有和不易替代的物种，博物馆借给外部科学研究人员的组织数量开始超过传统博物馆的标本。这一重要的遗传资源收藏一直处于危险之中，因为博物馆没有超低温设施，以防止生物分子在较温暖的储存温度下随着时间的推移而降解。该项目通过提供两个超冷冷藏箱、相关的组织存储用品以及技术人员将收集的藏品转移到超冷存储并更新在线藏品数据库的时间来解决这一缺点。确保这些藏品的长期保存将极大地提高其对科学和资源管理社区中各种用户群体的效用，特别是在系统学、种群遗传学和保护遗传学领域。这类研究将有助于保护规划者做出明智的决定，减轻生物多样性的损失。该项目的积极科学影响将通过博物馆的三个关于生物多样性研究的展览与美国公众分享，这些展览是免费的，每年可能有超过80万名参观者。

Most biodiversity research programs now use biomolecules (DNA and RNA) to help identify, determine evolutionary relationships, or study population biology of species. To meet this need, the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, the largest natural history museum in the Southeast U.S., routinely preserves biomolecules in the form of tissue samples taken from voucher specimens. The collection contains tissues from many species of vertebrates and aquatic invertebrates, including rare and not easily replaced species, and the number of tissue loans made by the museum to external scientific researchers is beginning to outpace that of traditional museum specimens. This important genetic resources collection has been at risk because ultra-cold facilities are not available at the museum to prevent biomolecules from degrading over time at warmer storage temperatures. This project addresses this shortcoming by providing two ultra-cold freezers, associated tissue storage supplies, and technician time to transfer the collection into ultra-cold storage and update the online collections database.Ensuring the long-term preservation of this collection will greatly improve its utility to a wide variety of user groups in the scientific and resource management communities, especially those in the fields of systematics, population genetics, and conservation genetics. Such research will facilitate informed decisions by conservation planners mitigating loss of biodiversity. The positive scientific impacts of this project will be shared with the U.S. public through three exhibits on biodiversity research at the museum, which is free-of-charge and potentially reaching over 800,000 visitors annually.