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

Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge LA

Investigators

Abstract

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.