Suitability of DNA extracted from archival specimens of fruit-eating bats of the genus Artibeus (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae) for polymerase chain reaction and sequencing analysis

Abstract

To establish a technique which minimized the effects of fixation on the extraction of DNA from formalin-fixed tissues preserved in scientific collections we extracted DNA samples from fixed tissues using different methods and evaluated the effect of the different procedures on PCR and sequencing analysis. We investigated muscle and liver tissues from museum specimens of five species of fruit-eating (frugivorous) bats of the Neotropical genus Artibeus (Chiroptera, Phyllostomidae): A. fimbriatus, A. lituratus, A. jamaicensis, A. obscurus, and A. planirostris. The results indicated that treatment of tissues in buffered solutions at neutral pH and about 37 °C for at least four days improves the quality and quantity of extracted DNA and the quality of the amplification and sequencing products. However, the comparison between the performance of DNA obtained from fixed and fresh tissues showed that, in spite of the fact that both types of tissue generate reliable sequences for use in phylogenetic analyses, DNA samples from fixed tissues presented a larger rate of errors in the different stages of the study. These results suggest that DNA extracted from formalin-fixed tissue can be used in molecular studies of Neotropical Artibeus bats and that our methodology may be applicable to other animal groups.