Opinion: To curate the molecular past, museums need a carefully considered set of best practices

Biomolecular research has sparked a methodological revolution in the field of anthropology, and museums are now faced with the curatorial challenge of conserving and evaluating materials for these new methods. Since 2010, hundreds of genome-wide datasets from ancient human samples have been published, and thousands more have been generated; doubling the amount of data in the field of paleogenomics now requires less time than the publication of a single article (1). Technological advances in laboratory and bioinformatic approaches have also led to a new era in paleomicrobiology, in which entire ancient microbial communities can be recovered from various substrates, such as calcified dental calculus (2). Increasingly, large-scale datasets for other biomolecules, such as proteins and metabolites, are generated and integrated into multi-omic understandings of the human past (2). Fig. 1. Museum collections staff stand among the anthropological collections at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. Museums are responsible for preserving collections and the information they contain for future generations. But in recent years, they’ve been given the increasingly challenging task of curating and conserving biomolecular data. Image credit: Chip Clark (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC). Anthropological collections are important for science and society for reasons that include their potential applications for biomolecular research (3, 4). Ethical issues are central in the changing circumstances for ancient biomolecular information. Potential negative impacts on indigenous communities (such as when paleogenomic studies contradict traditional histories and undermine territorial or repatriation claims) have magnified the importance of community-based practices (5). Competition among ancient-DNA laboratories for museum samples has been likened to “the Wild West” (6), and more strictly regulating access to samples has been advocated to prevent “hoarding” (7). As stewards of collections that contain ancient biomolecules (e.g., isotopes, proteins, DNA, and metabolites), museums play a critical role among stakeholders in biomolecular research and should … [↵][1]2To whom correspondence may be addressed. Email: sholtss{at}si.edu or courtney.hofman{at}ou.edu. [1]: #xref-corresp-1-1