dna preservation

[Catherine Young]

I've never heard that DNA is damaged by water.  It would be hard to imagine
how it could survive in the cell if it was.  I routinely dissolve
precipitated, purified  DNA in water and freeze it as a means of storage.
However, as far as storing animal body parts goes to optimize DNA yield the
best way is freezing preferably at approx.-70 degrees C, but -20 degrees C
seems to work fine for the moths I'm working with.  If this is too
difficult storing in absolute ethanol, preferably keeping them cold as
well, seems to work almost as well for some organisms.  I've also
successfully extracted DNA from pinned, dried specimens up to 10 yrs old.
Other people I know have done the same from 80 yr old specimens.
  I guess DNA is a remarkably stable molecule.  It needs to be otherwise
things can go terribly wrong in organism development.   I've also just
heard that chloroform killed specimens are almost impossible to extract
from. 


 
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