CSBR: Natural History: Infrastructure improvements to enhance the preservation and accessibility of the Collection of Genetic Resources at the LSU Museum of Natural Science

在一个自然和人为力量不断变化的世界里，生物研究收藏最重要的功能之一是保存一个物种发生在哪里和何时发生的永久记录。生物研究收藏使科学家既可以了解景观的变化如何影响物种，也可以预测未来景观的变化可能如何影响这些物种。作为环境健康的指标，保存在生物研究收藏中的标本为人类社会提供了一个重要工具，可用于研究与人类健康有关的各种问题，包括研究传染病或灾害对环境的影响。例如，如果没有生物研究收集，如果没有动物标本来确定作为感染剂储存库的野生物种，追踪新出现的人畜共患传染病(由传染病从动物转移到人类所引起的疾病)的整个弧线将是具有挑战性的。在美国墨西哥湾沿岸，如果不能很好地记录漏油前物种发生的时间和地点，确定大规模漏油对深水和沿海环境的生物影响将是具有挑战性的。生物研究藏品可以通过仔细保存标本来满足这些需求，这些标本记录了物种发生的时间和地点。这笔赠款支持路易斯安那州立大学自然科学博物馆的遗传资源收藏，这是最古老和最大的野生脊椎动物冷冻组织(例如心脏、肝脏、肌肉组织)和组织提取物(例如DNA)的收藏之一。自1979年创立以来，该文集已在1500多份出版物和论文中获得认可。路易斯安那州立大学自然科学博物馆的遗传资源收藏收藏了来自14万多只野生动物、8,000多个物种的遗传材料，每年从大约4,200个个体增加到10,000-15,000个样本。这一收集被在不同领域工作的科学家使用，平均每年向全球各地的研究人员提供2000个组织亚样本。该文库向国际社会提供遗传物质，用于基因组学、分子进化、种群遗传学、生态学、野生动物管理、法医学、流行病学、环境毒理学等领域的研究。只要有可能，收集的组织都会在现场液氮中快速冷冻，以确保迅速扩大的基因组学领域所需的脆弱生物材料，如RNA和蛋白质的保存。最理想的是，这些快速冷冻的组织在路易斯安那州立大学被转移到液氮蒸气冷冻箱(零下196摄氏度)进行长期存档。然而，博物馆的六个液氮冰柜现在已经满了。该奖项提供资金，为鸟类和哺乳动物标本购买两个额外的液氮蒸气冷冻机，以及一个更安全、更高效的液氮输送系统，并为一名研究生助理提供支持，将标本从超低温转移到新的液氮冷冻机。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

In a world whose landscape is constantly changing through natural and anthropogenic forces, one of the most important functions of biological research collections is to preserve a permanent record of where and when a species occurred. Biological research collections allow scientists to understand both how changes in the landscape affect species and to forecast how future changes to the landscape could affect those species. As indicators of environmental health, specimens preserved in biological research collections provide human society with a vital tool that can be applied to a diversity of issues related to human health, including studies of infectious diseases or the affect that disasters had on the environment. For example, without biological research collections, tracking the entire arc of an emerging infectious zoonotic disease (one caused by the transfer of an infectious agent from animals to humans) would be challenging if there were no animal specimens to determine the wild species that served as a reservoir for the infectious agent. Along the Gulf Coast of the United States, determining the biological effect of large oil spills on the deep-water and coastal environments would be challenging without good documentation of when and where species occurred before spills. Biological research collections are available to fill these needs through careful preservation of specimens that document when and where a species occurred. This grant supports the Collection of Genetic Resources at the Louisiana State University Museum of Natural Science, one of the oldest and largest collections of frozen tissues (e.g. heart, liver, muscle tissues) and tissue extracts (e.g. DNA) of wild vertebrates. Since its inception in 1979, the Collection has been acknowledged in more than 1500 publications and theses. The grant will allow the Collection to continue supplying the research community with the highest quality genetic materials.The Collection of Genetic Resources at the LSU Museum of Natural Science houses genetic material from more than 140,000 individual wild animals representing over 8,000 species, with a rate of growth of ca. 10,000-15,000 samples per year from ca. 4,200 individuals. This collection is used by scientists working in a diversity of fields, and provides, on average, 2000 tissue subsamples to researchers around the globe each year. The Collection supplies genetic materials to the international community for research in genomics, molecular evolution, population genetics, ecology, wildlife management, forensics, epidemiology, environmental toxicology, and other areas. Whenever possible, tissues in the Collection are flash frozen in the field in liquid nitrogen to ensure the preservation of fragile biomaterials, such as RNA and proteins, required by the dramatically expanding field of genomics. Optimally, those flash frozen tissues are transferred at LSU to liquid nitrogen vapor freezers (-196 degrees C) for long-term archiving. However, the Museum's six liquid nitrogen freezers are now full. This award provides funds to purchase two additional liquid nitrogen vapor freezers for the bird and mammal specimens, and a safer, more efficient liquid nitrogen delivery system and to provide support for a graduate assistant to transfer specimens from ultracold to the new liquid nitrogen freezers.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.