Does anyone have any (good) experiences with extracting DNA from formalin/formaldehyde preserved museum samples (teeth, bone or hair)?
Ancient DNA technology has opened up many new avenues for genomic analyses of historical populations. Yet, many (if not all?) museum samples have traditionally been preserved in formalin/formaldehyde, which severely damages the DNA. Does anyone know if this damages extents to all parts of the bone, tooth or hair? Is it possible that e.g. the inner root cap of teeth might still be 'intact'?
commercial silica based spin column tubes seems to be the best option for extracting DNA from tissue samples. Also, they claimed to reverse the crosslinking in DNA strands caused by long preservation in formalin.
Purification of DNA from formaldehyde fixed and paraffin embedded human tissue
Susan E. Goelz. Bert Vogelstein
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0006291X85903900
Thanks for the input - not every day you come across an old typewritten paper:)
/Peter
Yes, I'm sorry I posted such an old reference. I knew about it from my old career as a forensic serologist. There are updates to this old (but useful) reference.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0046817794902194
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0361090X0300103X
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