High-throughput sequencing of museum specimens and its implication for phylogenetic studies

In taxonomy and systematics, the millions of specimens housed in public and private insect collections have traditionally been viewed as useful only for morphological studies.  While recent studies have demonstrated the utility of PCR and high-throughput sequencing in recovering mitochondrial and ribosomal sequence data from dry mounted insects, little has been reported on nuclear genomic data from these specimens.  In this talk we will present results from high-throughput sequencing of dried specimens dating to over 80 years ago and discuss its implications for phylogenetic studies and species discovery.   We will describe protocols for assessing quality of sample DNA and for preparing high throughput sequence libraries from low quality DNA typically found in museum specimens.