Genomic DNA from Museum Bird Feathers

Abstract

Ancient avian DNAs have been analyzed from preparations of skins of museum specimens (Houde and Broun 1988; Arctander and Fjeldsa 1991; Smith et al. 1991), from soft tissue remains (Houde and Braun 1988; Cooper et al., 1992), and from bones (Cooper et al., 1992). Principally the questions that can he addressed by a molecular approach to ancient DNA (aDNA) do not differ from birds to, for instance, mammals. The large number of birds collected and stored at museums worldwide particularly facilitates studies that aim to investigate the genetic variability of past avian populations or their population dynamic and distribution. However, for large-scale sampling of old museum birds it would be advantageous to use a noninvasive sampling method, i.e., one that does not involve destruction of the skin. Successful PCR amplification from single hairs (Higuchi et al. 1988) suggested that it should be possible to amplify DNA from other keratinic tissues such as feathers. Indeed, this has recently been demonstrated by feather amplifications of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences (Smith et al. 1991; Taberlet and Bouvet 1991) as well as of genomic sequences (Ellegren, 1992) from contemporary birds. Moreover, Ellegren (1991) has shown that genomic sequences can be amplified and analyzed from a single, more than 100-year-old museum feather.