Burke Genetic Resources May 25, 2010

The Genetic Resource Collection at the Burke Museum is essentially a "library" of biodiversity--and one of the most important in the world for birds. The Burke's GRC and the few others like it are the only places where tissues of a wide variety of animals are being systematically collected and stored in archival conditions for future research. They contain frozen tissues from thousands of species that would otherwise not be available to scientists. The importance of such collections is increasing rapidly as habitats and organisms face destructive pressure in the wild, and as scientists discover the rich array of biological information available from well-preserved tissues.