Dear Fedor

Maybe this will be helpful http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1803022/pdf/pone.0000272.pdf. Unfortunately I haven't checked it.

Best regards

Ania

Dear Ania,

thanks for your reply. I know this paper, however, they just confirmed extraction with 220bp fragments, i.e. pretty short. I would be interested if anybody was able to get DNA from older specimens enabling to amplify fragments like 700bp.

Regards

Fedor

I am a Trichoptera systematist, who routinely gets DNA from caddisfly legs from old pinned dried specimens. When I send pinned beetles to my beetle friends, they tell me they are not optimal for DNA work. So I wondered "why the difference?". I think it is that beetles hard integument seals the tissue from desiccation, and the specimen rots inside. So perhaps target tissue that you think dried the fastest, like tarsi. Unfortunately, beetle systematists often keep their specimens moist in envelopes the field, so that they can pin them upon returning. This DNA is highly degraded, and the information on whether it was maintained in a moist preservative before pinning is not recorded on the label. 

We have not satisfy results until now

Google Scholar: 1) DNA Extraction from Dry Museum Beetles without Conferring External Morphological Damage and 2) Non-Destructive Sampling of Ancient Insect DNA.

Dear Fédor,

I asked Ignacio RIBERA about DNA extraction from dry Museum beetles.

His answer is :

 All depens on how the beetles were killed and preserved before mounted dry. Once dry the DNA is more or less well preserved, but what happened before is what is important.