I got some lizard specimen which had been stored in 95% alcohol for over 15 years at room temperature. Also, the lizards were all being preserved in the same container, while their legs were removed for karyotype experiments, which means there are some holes on their body. My question is that could these samples be applied in Sanger sequencing? Or even NGS? I wonder if this bad storage condition affect the DNA among these samples. Thanks!
It strongly depends; you have to be able to get quality DNA from them. It should not be impossible, but it will be tricky for sure.
Also, there might be the possibility you get exogenous and "mixed" DNA from the specimens.
I would suggest you to get some insights from this article, which in my opinion explains pretty well the use of museum material.
https://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/fulltext/S0169-5347(21)00214-7
Best wishes,
Mattia
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