Museomics

Sequencing DNA harvested from museum specimens – seemingly a portmanteau of museum and genomics.

According to Science News, museomics has been used to sequence elements of DNA extracted from the hair of two museum-preserved Tasmanian tigers (thylacines) – a species declared extinct in 1936. One of the scientists involved in the research, Dr. Stephan Schuster of Penn State University, said:

The large amount of mitochondrial and nuclear DNA gained in our study demonstrates the feasibility of a thylacine genome project. … It will also revive discussions on the possible resurrection of the animal.

In a fit of enthusiasm about such research, The New Scientist recently published a list of “ten extinct beasts that could walk the Earth again”: sabre-toothed tigers, Neanderthals, short-faced bears, Tasmanian tigers, glyptodons, woolly rhinoceri, dodos, giant ground sloths, moas, Irish elks, and gorillas.

(It appears that Dr. Schuster coined museomics in 2007, while working on DNA extracted from woolly mammoth hair.)