The American Museum of Natural History not only can boast to being one of the largest museums in the world, but it also world-renowned for it scientific research. Their research and studies cover some 3.5 billion years of history of nature and mankind.
While the public marvels at their wonderful displays and specimens in the exhibition halls, researchers and scientists affiliated with the museum are participating in over 100 in house research and out in the field expeditions worldwide every year.
And with the revolutionary strides taken in genetic research in recent years, it is only fitting the museum is moving itself to the forefront of the genetic revolution. Since 2001, the museum’s Sackler Institute for Comparative Genomics has been the museum’s next step forward in this discipline. It is called “conservation genetics,” the Sackler Institute is an animal gene repository. One of the largest in the country, its purpose is to give researchers and scientists around the world access to DNA and RNA through biological samples of different species of animals. Ultimately millions of samples will be available for study.
This fascinating area of research is rarely seen by regular museum goers, it is tucked away in one of the least auspicious places of the museum. Just to get to the institute one must (with a museum associate of course) traipse past the regular exhibitions through a couple of backrooms. The trail becomes seemingly cold as one is led through what appears to be the museum’s workshop, to which a pair of very nondescript doors look to be no more than entrance to a utility closet. On the other side is Sackler’s state of the art laboratory.
Instead of jars of pickled specimens or taxidermied animals, visitors are greeted by eight enormous cryogenic vats holding the tissue specimens. Inside the containers are over 100,000 and counting tissue, hair, and blood samples from a variety of animals from around the world.
But before you get any fantastical ideas of the American Museum of Natural History becoming Jurassic Park or Night at the Museum having a new ending, cloning is out of the question, these samples are used for practical, real research, some of which is already being put to use today.
Take for instance the lowly space bedbug. Researchers were able to take samples and break down the insect’s entire genome. With that information, they were able to, among other things, find out which genes make the bedbugs resistant to insecticides.
The specimens are helping the species own too. Bat RNA samples are being used to figure out new ways of stopping white nose syndrome in bats. Since 2006, the fungal disease has killed off over five and a half million bats in North America.
The Sackler Institute receives its samples from a variety of sources. For instance, the U.S. Park Service provides samples of species native to parks under their jurisdiction. Some of those samples are being used to find new ways to help endangered animals like the island fox on California’s Channel Islands.
Many of the samples are taken in the field by trained individuals, non-invasively, without harm to the animal.
With samples coming in on a steady basis, the cryogenic vats at the institute are capable of storing over one million tissue samples.
The vats keep the samples cool in a seemingly low tech way but it is very efficient. Eight inches of liquid nitrogen is placed or “charged” in the bottom of each vat, as the liquid nitrogen pool evaporates it creates a -256°F environment. It is so efficient at keeping the samples cool, what little electricity is spent is mostly for the vats diagnostic gauges. The vats are even capable of keeping the samples sufficiently frosty for 30 days without even being touched.
The animal samples are simply placed in racks which rest inside the vats. When a sample is requested, barcodes on each sample tube are linked to a computer database. Samples distributed are only about the size of a pinhead, assuring plenty of samples will be available for generations to come.
THEODORE ROOSEVELT ROTUNDA AND MEMORIAL HALL
There is good reason the main entrance is named after the 26th President of the United States. Theodore Roosevelt was not only an avid outdoorsman and conservationist, but his ties to the Museum of Natural History run deep. His father, Theodore Roosevelt Sr., actually helped found the museum and even had the charter signed in 1869 at the family home on East 20th Street.
As a youth, the younger Roosevelt learned taxidermy from one of naturalist John James Audubon’s taxidermists and began contributing animals specimens to the museum in 1872. One of his specimens, a snowy owl, is on display in Memorial Hall.
Future president and distant cousin, Franklin D. Roosevelt, laid the cornerstone for the two story memorial in 1937. During the dedication he told the crowd that Theodore had said to him, “Franklin, you can learn more about nature and life in the museum than in all the books and schools in the world.”
The dinosaur skeletons in the Roosevelt Rotunda are perhaps the most well known exhibit in the museum. It depicts a Barosaurus protecting its young from an Allosaurus. The skeletons are actually cast replicas because displaying them in this dramatic manner would be too heavy for the actual fossils.