Jen Walsh and Shawn Billerman recently had an invited review paper on using historical DNA from museum specimens come out for a special issue of Molecular Ecology Resources, “Using ancient DNA to understand evolution in the Anthropocene.” Their paper, “Historical DNA as a tool to address key questions in avian biology: a review of methods, challenges, applications, and future directions,” focuses on recent advances in extracting and sequencing DNA from historical museum specimens for a wide range of research questions. Using avian systems as a model, their paper highlights the many challenges still associated with using historical DNA from museum specimens, ways to overcome those challenges, and empirical examples in which researchers have applied these new technologies and advances. In their paper, Jen and Shawn argue that increasing accessibility to new sequencing technologies will provide researchers with tools to tap into the wealth of information contained within our valuable natural history collections. Read more here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1755-0998.13066
