Hirokazu Tsukaya
Herbarium specimens with corresponding DNA samples are useful, especially of plants that inhabit remote areas. However, compared with era of von Siebold when nearly all information demanded from biologists could be supplied from dried specimen, usefulness and value of herbarium specimen in modern biology had shrunken. Herbarium specimens linked to DNA samples would be useful to a wide range of researchers, not only taxonomists. With that philosophy in mind, general collections of specimens and DNA sample were made by members of the Society of Himalayan Botany, Japan, in the Himalaya in 2003 (Tsukaya, 2005).
Dr. Y. Iokawa of Joetsu University of Education, Japan (botanical expedition to Mustang, Nepal), Dr. M. Mikage (Tohoku University, Japan), and Mr. M. Kanno of Tohoku University, Japan, and Dr. S. Noshito (Forestry & Forest Products Research Institute, Japan), (expedition to Sikkim, India), collected DNA samples of 355 specimens from Mustang and 385 specimens from Sikkim on FTA Cards (Tsukaya et al., 2005). A test of the quality of the DNA collected from Mustang showed good amplification of fragments for the ITS region of the nuclear DNA for more than 70% of samples examined (Tsukaya et al., 2005). The unsuccessful samples might yeild results by altering the conditions for DNA amplification. The compactness of the sampling equipment and the ease of collecting samples were proven on these expeditions.
Some problems were also found with the FTA Cards on long expeditions:
Only two botanical expeditions in Mustang and Sikkim accumulated more than 1,000 DNA specimens and at least half of them are expected to be used for PCR analysis. These collections can be called Bio-Resources. Such collections will facilitate PCR-based research that could otherwise have been conducted only with difficulty by most researchers. I would therefore like to propose that more plant taxonomists join our trials.