Virus sequencing of museum mammal specimens to define environmental and anthropogenic drivers of virus ecology and to understand disease outbreaks.

从自然历史收藏中保存的标本中提取的组织样本可以揭示导致疾病的现代病毒进化史的主要见解，并有助于定义使病毒能够在物种之间跳跃的遗传变化。我们将重点介绍已知是新的人类和动物病毒性疾病的主要来源的两个哺乳动物目-蝙蝠和啮齿动物。病毒含有DNA或RNA基因组。RNA病毒往往进化得非常快，并经常在物种之间跳跃。DNA相对稳定，可以保持完整数千年。然而，RNA -特别是单链RNA -要脆弱得多。这意味着几乎没有努力，因此成功地从历史（博物馆）标本中获得RNA病毒序列特征。在英国自然历史博物馆，我们拥有最大的保存完好的哺乳动物标本收藏之一，这些标本可以追溯到18世纪。这些样本可以为现代病毒感染的进化史提供一个直接的窗口。这项概念验证研究将侧重于优化标本采样和RNA检索方法，以识别组织、提取和基因测序方案，并定期提供足够数量和质量的RNA，以检测和发现已知和新型病毒。如果我们的概念验证研究取得成功，我们现有的动物收藏工作将节省数十年的努力，并节省数百万的研究资金，用于对活体动物进行采样。它将开启未来的创新研究，以确定病毒进化、跨物种传播以及过去和未来动物和人类疾病爆发的环境、宿主和人为驱动因素。

Tissue samples from preserved specimens in natural history collections can reveal major insights into the evolutionary history of modern-day viruses that cause disease, and help define genetic changes that enable viruses to jump between species. We will focus on the two orders of mammals known to be a major source of new human and animal viral diseases - bats and rodents. Viruses contain either DNA or RNA genomes. RNA viruses tend to evolve very rapidly and frequently jump between species. DNA is relatively stable and can remains intact for many thousands of years. However, RNA - especially single stranded RNA - is far more fragile. This has meant that there has been little effort, and therefore success in obtaining RNA virus sequence signatures from historical (museum) specimens. At the Natural History Museum UK, we have one of the largest collections of well-preserved mammal specimens collected as far back as 1700s. These samples could provide a direct window into the evolutionary past of modern viral infections. This proof-of-concept study will focus on the optimisation of specimen sampling and RNA retrieval methods to identify tissues, extraction, and genetic sequencing protocols and that routinely deliver RNA of sufficient quantity and quality to enable detection and discovery of known and novel viruses. If successful in our proof-of-concept study, work on our existing collections of animals would save decades of effort, and millions in research funding required to sample live animals. It would open future, innovative research to define environmental, host and anthropogenic drivers of virus evolution, cross-species transmission and past and future animal and human disease outbreaks.