Historical gene expression and epigenetic analysis of ancient and museum specimens

Advances in museum genomics techniques, particularly the generation of genome-wide data from wet-preserved museum specimens, are enabling historical analyses of gene expression and regulatory variation. This emerging capacity is opening new opportunities to reconstruct biological responses to environmental change through time and to translate historical genomic insights into evidence-based conservation planning. 

Workshop aims

• To build a community interested in generating historical datasets that capture the temporal dynamism of regulatory change, for the study of disease, development and environmental response. 
• Develop awareness and research community support to enable a larger application for a consortium-based approach for funding applications. 
• We will use this workshop as the mechanism to scope an inter-institutional White Paper describing the efforts to scale-up this developing field of research and to search for interested collaborators and contributors.

Target Audience: Researchers in the museum genomics, ancient DNA, and/or evolutionary genomics fields that want to develop historical context to understand the trajectory of regulatory change and response to environmental pressures.

Draft schedule

Day 1 — Tues 10 Nov

• Scene setting and the need for a consortium-based approach to this developing area of research.
• Intro to current capacity, methods, approaches and analytical methods.
• Keynote 1: Nic Rawlence, University of Otago.
• ECR highlights and speed talks – advances, methods and how to generate historical gene regulation datasets (Open call — you can indicate your intention to present on the registration form).
• Breakout groups – opportunities and research areas of interest.
• Synthesis session to identify focus areas.
• Evening: Dinner/social event (own cost).

Day 2 — Wed 11 Nov

• Keynote 2: Emilio Mármol Sánchez, University of Copenhagen.
• ECR highlights and speed talks — advances, methods and how to generate historical gene regulation datasets (Open call — you can indicate your intention to present on the registration form).
• Targeted breakout groups to articulate the needs of 2-3 priority areas — as identified in Day 1.
• Synthesis and assigning theme leaders.
• Building the community — who are we missing and how do we reach out to them? This is new capacity, how do we get this on people’s radars?

Day 3 — Thu 12 Nov (optional)

• Morning tour of the new Diversity Building of the National Research Collection, followed by morning tea.

Invited keynote speakers

Associate Professor Nic Rawlence is Director of the Otago Paleogenetics Laboratory at the University of Otago. His research applies palaeoecological and paleogenetic approaches to reconstruct prehistoric ecosystems and examine how ecosystems responded to (or in some cases didn’t respond) to dynamic geological, climatic, and human impacts across New Zealand and the Pacific. His work increasingly integrates ancient and functional genomics to investigate evolutionary adaptation, ecological change, and trait evolution in extinct and extant island taxa. 

Dr Emilio Mármol Sánchez, is a researcher from the University of Copenhagen who specialises in bioinformatics, biostatistics, genomics, and transcriptomics, with a particular interest in RNA biology and gene regulatory networks. His current work focuses on developing and optimizing laboratory and computational approaches to study RNA molecules in archival and ancient biological sources, while also applying a multi-omics approach to investigate how population dynamics and genetic load shape the epigenetic landscape and genomic architecture of extinct and extant endangered species.