The NHM is the UK's national museum of natural history, a world centre of scientific excellence in taxonomy and biodiversity holding ~80 million specimens of species from across the tree of life (plants animals, fungi, microbes) in its reference collections, with ~350 scientific staff actively involved in collections-based research. Collections expand by ~25K items each year with new specimens received from targeted collecting by researchers and curators, plus donations and bequests by scientists and public. The NHM is spread across multiple UK sites including London, Tring, and Wandsworth, now extending to a new site focussing on digitisation, genomics and biobanking to be built on the Thames Valley Science Park, Shinfield opening in 2026.
The NHM's Molecular Collections facility MCF is a centralised secure biobank storage facility for biodiversity molecular collections in parallel with the NHM's traditional voucher collections, consolidating genetic resource material (tissues, cell lines, environmental and ancient DNAs: legacy and new) created and used by molecular biology researchers internally and externally, digitising and making all samples and metadata fully discoverable and accessible to researchers worldwide.
Biomolecules extracted from MCF's collections spanning current and deep time series, representing all species and populations from across the globe, inform us about the effects of climate change and the biodiversity crisis, help us find solutions for food security and conservation, develop biomonitoring and wildlife forensics technologies, identify pests, parasites and emerging zoonoses, all critical for human health and wellbeing. We will present highlights here from our traditional and molecular collections, and then focus on the outcomes of a specialist 10-year molecular collection's programme, the Schistosomiasis Collection at the NHM: SCAN.
Schistosomiasis, a disease caused by flatworm parasites (schistosomes), is a neglected tropical disease affecting millions of people, most of whom live in sub-Saharan Africa. Most of the research into schistosomes has relied on parasite strains that have been passaged in the laboratory for decades. SCAN's collection of schistosomes provides the research community with access to the wider genetic diversity of these parasites found in the field, enabling new avenues of investigation, while linking control and surveillance teams to labs using cutting-edge genomics.
Jackie Mackenzie-Dodds manages the Molecular Collections facility MCf at the Natural History Museum NHM London, developing and curating the 2M biodiversity sample repository since its launch in 2011, making biodiversity genetic resources accessible to the wider scientific community. She has over 30 years of experience in and laboratory management and molecular biology research from both industry and academia with research at the NHM including a wide variety of projects in non-human species in taxonomy and evolution. From 2008 she has focussed on molecular collections management and biobanking, aligning and collaborating in initiatives in the EU and US including ESBB, ISBER, GGBN, SYNTHESYS, Frozen Ark and more recently CryoArks and Darwin Tree of Life DToL projects.
Aidan Emery is a principal researcher at the Natural History Museum (NHM). For the past 20 years, he has mostly focused on facilitating research into schistosomiasis, a neglected tropical disease caused by flatworm parasites and transmitted by snails. Affecting many millions of people worldwide, schistosomiasis is most prevalent in Africa south of the Sahara, where it has been described as second only to malaria in terms of parasitic disease impact. Almost all research into schistosomes has been carried out on a very small number of laboratory strains that have been maintained in laboratories for decades, a situation that prompted Aidan to set up SCAN, schistosomiasis collection at the NHM, a biobank initiative providing access to schistosome specimens from the field. In addition to his work on parasites, Aidan has recently been part of the team working on the CryoArks initiative to create a UK biobank of animal tissues, linking museums, universities, zoos and aquaria.