Demande de prélèvement destructif

The Herbarium G of the Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques de Genève has been receiving an increasing number of requests for destructive sampling. Often this is for rarely-collected species, types or other historical specimens in G that contain scant material. While wishing to continue supporting international research efforts, our main responsibility remains the safeguarding of the collections and ensuring that they remain available for research purposes for present and future generations. With this in mind, we request that researchers inform us, when the loan is requested, of the purposes that the specimens will be used for, and request special permission for destructive sampling.

Dissection or removal of parts of loaned specimens or material studied on site (i.e. extraction of pollen, spores, DNA or phytochemicals etc. for anatomical studies and molecular sequencing) must be done with extreme care, and only when the tissue or organ concerned is present in sufficient quantity on the specimen to leave similar material in place. For material mounted on a herbarium sheet, as a priority, the material stored in a sub-packet attached to the specimen, when present, should be used for destructive sampling.
Any DNA sequence data resulting from extractions originating from Herbarium G specimens should be deposited in GenBank, EMBL-EBI, or DDBJ.

The DNA annotation slip should contain:

G barcode
Name of the institution
Name of the principal scientist responsible for the research
Name of the specific research project
DNA extraction method performed
Targeted DNA regions
Date of the analysis

Requests for destructive sampling that will extract DNA and make publicly available the maximum amount of information are favoured (e.g. NGS analyses with publicly available raw data). Requests for destructive sampling aiming only at sequencing one or two short DNA regions are discouraged, especially for type material, as further destructive sampling may be requested in the future. Whenever possible, the remaining DNA material after sequencing should be lyophilized and returned to Herbarium G in order to avoid additional sampling of the specimen, this being compulsory when few DNA regions have been sequenced. Researchers are allowed to keep an aliquot of the DNA extraction, upon agreement from the G herbarium.

Please be aware that the Conservatoire and Jardin botaniques de Genève complies with the Nagoya protocol on Access to Genetic Resources. All researchers are strictly requested to use the material sampled for non-commercial research purposes only. Any potential conflict with the Nagoya protocol should be regulated before any sample is removed from the G material.

Download the Request for destructive sampling (PDF, 261 Ko)