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Recording an Eons-Long Story of Nature’s Past Using Ancient DNA

By Patrick Sherry

Robert Guralnick, Ph.D., curator of biodiversity informatics at the Florida Museum of Natural History, studies biodiversity and its change using past baseline data, including ancient DNA, in order to uncover an eons-long story of a perpetually changing Earth. Learning from the story of nature’s past, his research hopes to guide today’s world through unprecedented changes.

While he is broadly interested in using molecular evolutionary approaches to understand past and present biodiversity, he has been particularly excited about the power of ancient DNA. Ancient DNA provides a means to uncover diversity that would otherwise have been lost – diversity we no longer have on the planet today. Focusing on that past diversity specifically can overall improve understanding of current and future environment changes; therefore, assisting in mitigating risks that these changes may cause.

“If we’re going to predict how we’ll be able to respond in the face of continuing change to our world, we’re [going to] have to know what happened in the past,” said Guralnick. “You have to go from the past to the present to establish baselines to understand change. What ancient DNA does, is it gives us a baseline for understanding the change dynamics that have led to the world we have today, and the world we’ll have tomorrow”

Professionally, he began his research career in paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley because of a fascination with diversity in deep time. His interests soon shifted more towards integrating ecological and evolutionary approaches, especially during his time on faculty at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Redirecting his interests was done to pursue a mission of making the world more understandable in terms of the past, present, and future through greater interdisciplinary means.

This type of scientific inquiry has given Dr. Guralnick the privilege to start the ancient DNA facility at the Florida Museum of Natural History. The facility consists of a laboratory where researchers extract DNA from fossils. One of its main goals is to use refined methods to recover DNA more effectively. DNA tends to decay relatively slowly – due to this, it is one of the greatest assets in illustrating environmental systems in the past. Using a variety of new methods well suited to the recovery of ancient and historic DNA, this facility has also been able to make advances in extracting DNA in places where conditions accelerate degradation such as the Caribbean. In doing so, the lab is attempting to record history that would otherwise be impossible to recover.

“We’re always pushing against the boundaries of what we can do to understand patterns and processes about the world,” said Guralnick. “We’re trying to uncover the truths about the world to make the best decisions possible to mitigate the most risk around a healthier future. I’d argue science is a way to understand how to make the best decision possible to save the world.”

Other interests of the facility include barcoding projects to understand environmental communities and how they changed over time. The purpose of these projects is to provide researchers with unprecedented data that allows them to ask complex questions.

“Mostly we’re forced to rely on our modern-day representatives to understand many evolutionary processes,” said Guralnick. “If we want to look at the processes that generate biodiversity, we often have to rely on modern data to make inferences about the past. But if we can directly sample DNA from fossils, we can incorporate them directly into phylogenies and ask questions about evolutionary processes. I have been very fortunate to work with some incredible scientists and colleagues who have been the real reason for the success of the ancient DNA facility at the Florida Museum.”

Overall, Dr. Guralnick finds his research as a rewarding privilege. The process of conducting this research personally fuels a never-ending cycle of curiosity but also is a chance to be a part of a shared desire to give value to society and the future. Whether it is providing opportunities for prospective students or creating interdisciplinary collaboration, he emphasizes that the main goal of the facility and his research is to create collective action – collective action is the key to allowing others to pursue potentially world-changing research.

“I’ve been really fortunate to see how well UF has aligned with my vision,” said Guralnick. “With the way I roll with collaboration and interdisciplinary sciences, and how UF rolls, it’s been a pleasure to see that alignment over the years. I’m also really excited about how much that fits the model of the UFGI as well.”