Abstract
Museums have been described as "storehouses of DNA" for over 30 years, but it is only with recent improvements to DNA extraction and sequencing that we are beginning to see substantial use of collections as sources of genetic information. In this talk I will discuss some of the work the NHM ancient DNA group have completed in the last year, with a focus on the particular way that the projects developed due to being conducted within a national museum. In the first example, I will discuss work on a set of human remains recovered from a disused well in medieval Norwich, UK, and in the second I will describe how our quantification of DNA degradation in museum insects has shaped the structure of what may be the largest collections-based genomics project in the world.
Speaker
Prof. Ian Barnes from the Natural History Museum, London, UK.
Barnes' profile page at the Natural History Museum, London.