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Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century (2020)

Chapter: 2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges

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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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2
Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges

Biological collections are a critical part of the nation’s science and innovation infrastructure. Preserved, fossil, and living specimens constitute a vast repository of biological and ecological data about Earth’s biodiversity (Bates, 2007; Meineke et al., 2018a; Wildt, 2000). They provide the foundation for scientific knowledge about past and present organisms, how they are interconnected, and the ways in which their physical and genetic characteristics change over time and space. Specimens and their associated data—from genetic and molecular signatures to digital label data and images—also serve as source material for discovery and hypothesis-driven research across life science. Numerous publications have documented how biological collections underpin basic discovery science such as taxonomy, genomics, systematics, evolutionary biology, and biogeography within and among taxa-focused disciplines (e.g., microbiology, botany, mammalogy, herpetology, ichthyology, and mycology); they also support much of the applied research that drives innovation and provides crucial knowledge about such pressing societal challenges as sustainable food production, biodiversity, ecosystem conservation, and improving human health and security. As new technologies and methodologies in research provide new insights about these specimens, sometimes making possible scientific uses never thought imaginable, the value of biological collections increases even more.

This chapter outlines the fundamental ways in which biological collections support scientific research by preserving biological and ecological knowledge over time and space, enabling new biological discoveries, deepening and widening the scientific understanding of complex societal challenges, and driving scientific innovations. The chapter also touches on best practices for evaluating and consistently measuring the impact of biological collections and how their contributions to science and society continually expand.

A VAST DATA-RICH REPOSITORY

The vast number and types of biological specimens housed in U.S. biological collections make it possible for them to contribute to scientific research in a myriad of ways. For example, biological collections play an important role in providing materials—sometimes unique and rare—that can be studied in various ways, such as by comparing their genomes with information on their phenotypes, distribution, and ecology that can be found in the physical specimens themselves and their metadata. Scientists estimate that 800 million to 1 billion specimens

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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are housed in U.S. natural history collections alone (Kemp, 2015).1 These combined with living stock collections, which continually propagate and multiply organisms for research, result in a total number of U.S. biological specimens that undoubtedly exceeds 1 billion.

The immense data held in these collections capture a large amount of knowledge about species morphology, biology, traits, and distribution. The use of biological collections and their associated data in research has increased in the past decade in part due to the amount of digital data available online in searchable databases (Ball-Damerow et al., 2019; Hedrick et al., 2020; Nelson and Ellis, 2018) (see Figure 5-1). As described in Chapter 5, this transformation and the increase in the accessibility of digitized specimen data have been so profound that undigitized collections are now referred to as “dark data” by the biological community. Advances in research technologies and methodologies have also been instrumental in increasing the use of biological collections data in scientific research as well as in generating new and valuable types of biological collection data. For example, techniques from genetics, chemistry, physics, and engineering have made it possible for biological specimens to become resources for entirely new fields of research, such as isotope ecology and paleoecology. Among the most prominent sets of new technologies that have expanded data and use of biological collections in research arose from the -omics2 revolution (see section on Enabling Biological Discoveries below).

As indicated in Chapter 1, the billions of specimens held in biological collections are increasingly accompanied by a rich complement of additional biological material and data (see Figure 1-2) that are being used both to generate new insights about life on Earth and to open new avenues of inquiry in almost every field of science, medicine, and technology (Boundy-Mills et al., 2016; Riojas et al., 2019; Schindel and Cook, 2018; Webster, 2017). A single specimen or series of specimens, if studied by multiple investigators, immediately becomes a nexus that ties disparate studies together. Historically, many biological collections have not included specimens with diverse preparations or broad taxon representation per field sampling event. But biological collections provide a natural platform for data integration, particularly when holistic or “extended specimens” are available that facilitate diverse sets of questions (Hedrick et al., 2020; Lendemer et al., 2020; Schindel and Cook, 2018; Thiers et al., 2019; Webster, 2017). For example, collections of insects and ear punches of rodents now being assembled by the National Ecological Observatory Network would have much greater utility and impact if they included whole specimens with a full complement of associated symbionts and additional taxonomic groups to enable a greater variety of research questions (Cook et al., 2016). This is analogous to

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1 The Integrated Digitized Biocollections is the most comprehensive listing of natural history collections in the United States and lists 1,600 natural history collections in the United States associated with 729 different institutions. This list is incomplete and particularly underrepresents small, regional collections and private collections. See https://www.idigbio.org.

2 A rapidly evolving, multidisciplinary, and emerging field that encompasses genomics, epigenomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

a genetic stock center that integrates strains, disruption or insertion into mutant libraries, genome sequences, and genome annotations using model organisms. Over time, a diverse set of disciplines, technologies, and questions can be joined through individual specimens or sets of specimens, which in turn provides primary biodiversity infrastructure for multiple disciplines. A single specimen is thus transformed into an extended specimen that includes the physical specimen itself and any derivative products. This makes it possible for interdisciplinary researchers to study interactions among organisms, communities, and species (Schindel and Cook, 2018) and leads to a new understanding and appreciation of the vast data-rich biological collections repository.

FUNDAMENTAL WAYS IN WHICH BIOLOGICAL COLLECTIONS SUPPORT SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH

Biological collections facilitate research on diverse taxonomic, temporal, and spatial scales. Traditionally they have been most heavily utilized by researchers trying to classify and understand the origins of biodiversity, including terrestrial and marine species as well as microbes. Increasingly—due to a myriad of factors including increased digital access to collections and changing technologies in the biological, physical, and chemical sciences—collections are being used by researchers across the scientific spectrum, to answer diverse questions of immediate relevance to society. Collections provide the raw data for tracking pathogens, identifying invasive species, and many other pursuits that require real-time monitoring. The following sections highlight some of these diverse research agendas, with the aim of outlining the centrality of collections for scientific inquiry and verification with physical specimens.

Preserving and Expanding Knowledge

Each specimen is a unique, tangible, and often irreplaceable representation of life on Earth—past and present. Biological collections maintain specimens of every species known, both “type specimens,” which are the specimens originally used to describe a species, and other specimens subsequently collected over time during various explorations and recording events. Sometimes a single natural history or living specimen is all that is known about a species, but these specimens contain the genetic benchmarks and baseline data against which all modern observations and experimentations can be compared. More generally, biological collections serve as the primary source of research material for studying species as well as the main source of information about species, including information about their genetic material, geographic ranges, and morphological characteristics—all of which is used to define the basic units of life on Earth along with their evolutionary histories, their distributions, and the processes that gave rise to them. For example, biological collections are indispensable for exploring and investigating biodiversity and species conservation and for providing a temporal window—on the order of decades, millennia, or even geological epochs—into environmental change

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

(Meineke et al., 2018a). The primary focus of natural history collections, and to some extent biodiversity living collections, has for centuries been taxonomy,3 species delimitation, and comparative biology (NAS, 2005), while the main goal of living stock collections has been to allow researchers from varied disciplines to build on knowledge about basic biological functions (McCluskey et al., 2017), although the distinction has not been absolute, and biodiversity living collections have also been used for taxonomy, species delimitation, and comparative biology.

While the spectrum of possibilities has been greatly increased thanks to technological advances in various areas, from curation to digitization (see Chapter 5), the core utility and the organization of natural history collections remain heavily influenced by the original emphasis on biodiversity discovery. Many researchers and museums focus on gathering collections of species found regionally, whereas others aim for comprehensive global collections that contain all the species of a given group of organisms. For instance, some biological collections, such as the ornithology collections at Tring in Hertfordshire, United Kingdom, or at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, contain approximately 95 percent of the known fundamental taxonomic units found globally. The global coverage of other groups of organisms with known abundant species richness, such as insects or microorganisms, is generally not nearly so complete in biological collections, however. On the other hand, most natural history collections maintain a regional focus and, as such, document genotypic and phenotypic variation in specific localities. As local ecosystems are modified and sometimes destroyed, biological collections become the only remaining representations of endangered species that may be driven to extinction, making the specimen information these collections contain essential for biodiversity conservation efforts. For example, a recent National Academies report on the taxonomic status of the endangered red wolf and Mexican wolf reviewed many studies using morphological traits as well as genetic analyses of specimens, many of which are housed in natural history collections (NASEM, 2019a). Like natural history collections, biodiversity collections of living organisms, which consist of independent, wild-type isolates maintained as living organisms, tissues, or cells, are critical for “the ex-situ conservation of components of biological diversity”4 through perpetual organism replication and the cryopreservation of germplasms. Some of these collections trace their origins to research collections of one or a few investigators, while others are created through the effort of specific research communities. While living stock collections often represent just a sliver of the existing biodiversity, they still serve as a taxonomic resource (Boundy-Mills et al., 2016; McCluskey et al., 2017) as well as providing diverse model organisms and the base material for physiological, biochemical, and molecular studies (Jarrett and McCluskey, 2019; Riojas et al., 2019). For example, the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has been used as a model organism for genetic research by different research disciplines since Thomas Hunt Morgan used it to elucidate the role that chromosomes play in heredity, for which he was awarded the 1933 Nobel

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3 The discovery, description, and documentation of species, the foundational unit of biodiversity.

4 See Convention on Biological Diversity, art. 2, https://www.cbd.int/convention/articles/?a=cbd-02.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

Prize (Nobel Prize Media, 2019); since Morgan’s time, studies in Drosophila of genetics, physiology, and microbial pathogenesis have resulted in eight additional Nobel Prizes (Rubin and Lewis, 2000).

Technological innovation will continue to increase our ability to extract information from samples and expand our knowledge by addressing questions that were not even envisioned when specimens were originally collected, just as specimens collected centuries ago are today used in new ways, such as for genomics studies, which would have been unimaginable at the time of collection. For this to happen, specimens need to be collected with a more diverse set of research objectives in mind, from stable isotopes and transcriptome and epigenetic studies to host–parasite interactions, microbiome diversity, and the dynamics of biological communities. To future-proof this critical infrastructure, the biological collections community needs to engage with diverse research communities to gain an understanding of the best strategies and priorities for sampling contemporary biodiversity to build collections with maximum utility in the future. Given the existence of sampling biases in today’s biological collections (Nekola et al., 2019), it is crucial that future sampling efforts address these biases by coordinating across institutions to both get maximum use from their existing specimen resources and design future fieldwork to maximize temporal comparability and future research impact. The use of biological collections to estimate demographic trends is clearly an emerging area of collections-based research, and in the future, a major goal will be to make this estimation more reliable and accurate, including for common species that can serve as indicators of rapidly changing environments.

Enabling Biological Discoveries

Biological collections are vital assets of the nation’s science and technology enterprise and form the foundation for scientific discoveries about the living world around us. Taking advantage of scientific and technological advances, biological collections have the opportunity to make fundamental contributions to science and to inspire people to engage with a new age of discovery. Both physical specimens and genetic repositories of DNA, tissues, and other materials are sources for genomic research, which focuses on the structure, function, evolution, and mapping of genomes for many purposes, including medical diagnosis, agriculture, industrial biotechnology, forensic biology, and conservation. When augmented with collections-associated data such as spatial or phenotypic information and coupled with powerful advances in genetics, informatics, automation, and artificial intelligence, -omics analyses using living and natural history collections can increase our understanding and improve our stewardship of Earth’s biodiversity.

Biological collections have played a critical role in providing a wide variety of materials for the development and fine-tuning of new -omics technologies such as genomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, which in turn benefit many fields of research. For example, as described in Chapter 1, since the discovery of the enzyme Taq polymerase in a bacteria strain deposited in the American

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

Type Culture Collection (ATCC) in the 1960s (see Box 1-2), the advancement and accessibility of next-generation sequencing technologies have rapidly transformed life science research by providing the ability to rapidly analyze and profile genomes. Advanced -omics technologies include sensitive molecular biology techniques that allow researchers to obtain results from smaller amounts of DNA from specimens. Successful barcoding by Sanger sequencing has been commonplace for more than two decades, especially for old specimens with degraded or fragmented DNA. More recently, next-generation sequencing, especially short-read technology and sequence capture of targeted genes, has expanded the scope of DNA-based phylogenetic and functional studies and is enabling the inclusion of thousands of species in a single analysis, with samples obtained from natural history collections (Kates et al., 2018, 2019). For example, regulatory regions associated with the loss of flight in birds have been revealed through the genome sequencing of natural history specimens coupled with functional genomics and the analysis of phenotypic traits (Sackton et al., 2019). Also, biological collections were the source of the specimens used for the first sequencing of the Neanderthal genome,5 and decades-old slides from such collections offered crucial clues about human malarial evolution (Gelabert et al., 2016); in both cases, biological collections were of great benefit in improving our understanding of human evolution and adaptation. Biological collections also have an important role to play in providing materials—sometimes unique and rare—that are used to connect genomes to information about phenotype, distribution, and ecology contained in the physical specimen and its metadata.

Living stock collections provide a vast quantity of high-quality living and preserved specimens that can be used to ensure reproducibility and replicability in science through the long-term preservation of genetic identity (NASEM, 2019d). Decades of research on generations of these living collections have led to fundamental discoveries in basic life science, from cellular and molecular biology or biochemistry to neuroscience or physiology and to applied life science such as new biotechnologies, biomonitoring, or medical imaging. For example, aspects of the cell cycle were identified from the study of the bacterium Escherichia coli and the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae maintained in culture collections (Campos et al., 2018). Indeed, living stock collections provide essential research model organisms used by many scientists, some of whom have been awarded Nobel Prizes in recognition of life-changing discoveries in physiology and medicine (see Box 2-1). Living stocks such as Drosophila stocks also support a broad range of genetic and evolutionary research, with emerging uses in behavioral neuroscience and circuitry, non-coding RNA biology, biosensors (Bellen et al., 2010; Rubin and Lewis, 2000; Wangler et al., 2015), and functional genomics (Mohr et al., 2014).

The development of gene editing methods such as T-DNA, CRISPR (clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats), and RNAi to generate knockout or disruption mutations has expanded the range of organisms available for discovery-driven research. The number of model organism species has grown in

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5 See https://www.genome.gov/27539119/2010-release-complete-neanderthal-genome-sequenced.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

the past decade, with more than 100 species now considered model organisms (Jarrett and McCluskey, 2019). Some organisms maintained in these collections are studied by a specific research community. An example is the squid Doryteu this pealei, which has giant axons up to 1 mm in diameter, enabling neurobiology studies. Other organisms, such as type strains, tissue cultures, or research organisms (mice, zebrafish, non-human primates, etc.) are maintained for their general research value (Jarrett and McCluskey, 2019). Microbial living collections also constitute a repository of biodiversity used globally for cutting-edge research (De Vero et al., 2019). More than one-third of the deposits of microbe strains into patent repositories between 2001 and 2016 were from U.S. collections, and 3 U.S. collections are among the 47 International Depositary Authorities under terms of the Budapest Treaty on the International Recognition of the Deposit of Microorganisms for the Purposes of Patent Procedure6 of the World Intellectual Property Organization (Wu et al., 2018). One is the Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service Culture Collection Northern Regional Research Laboratory (NRRL) Database used extensively for basic and applied agricultural research, such as taxonomy, for biocontrol of plant pathogens, and even for industrial biotechnology. In fact, the existence of this collection was one of the reasons that patent repositories were established: the NRRL collection was the source of the Penicillium notatum strain, a discovery that produced economically relevant amounts of penicillin and as such is a foundational collection for the modern biotechnology era. A second one is the National Center for Marine Algae and Microbiota, which holds thousands of species of microalgae maintained as cryopreserved or actively growing cultures. This living collection is tapped for both basic and applied research, especially filling the needs of pharmaceutical, aquaculture, environmental and bioremediation, analytical instrument, and biofuels research (Scranton et al., 2015; Taunt et al., 2018). Finally, ATCC is by far the most used and cited culture collection in the world. Since 1976, more than 99,000 U.S. patents have cited ATCC alone. Many yeast species are used in fermentation processes to produce fine and bulk chemicals, food and feed ingredients, and fermented foods and beverages (Abbas, 2006). These and many other biodiversity collections are used in basic and applied research, including several genome sequencing projects, funded by various institutions, including the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Driving Innovation

The potential for the use of biological collections in transformative and innovative research has never been greater. Beyond the traditional fields of research described above, biological collections have been a major source of inspiration for scientists from other disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, and engineering.

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6 All states party to the Treaty are obliged to recognize microorganisms deposited as a part of the patent procedure, irrespective of where the depository authority is located. In practice this means that the requirement to submit microorganisms to each and every national authority in which patent protection is sought no longer exists.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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For example, unconventional uses of collections in the field of synthetic biology and biomimetics—which are explored in this section—emphasize the potential transdisciplinary opportunities that biological collections can help fulfill.

Supporting Synthetic Biology

Living collections have been instrumental in the development of tools—and still provide the founding material—for synthetic biology, an interdisciplinary field that spans biology and engineering. The foundational work in this field was carried out in the microbial model species Escherichia coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. These microbial systems remain central to this field and have been used for complex circuit design, metabolic engineering, minimal genome construction, and cell-based therapeutic strategies (Cameron et al., 2014). Starting in the mid-1990s, DNA sequencing and improved computational tools made it possible to sequence complete microbial genomes. E. coli became the synthetic biology workhorse because of how easily its genes are manipulated, its largely documented biology, and its well-studied gene regulatory systems that

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

provide a convenient initial source of circuit “parts.” For example, BioBricks are building blocks composed of either natural or engineered DNA sequences such as promoters, coding sequences, and ribosome binding sites that are used to assemble synthetic biological circuits called devices; a set of devices is then combined to form a system that performs high-level tasks (Knight, 2003). The BioBrick standard biological parts7 are now used worldwide—for example, at the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition.8 In addition to E. coli, many specimens from numerous biological collections have been tapped to develop BioBricks (Kahl and Endy, 2013; Radeck et al., 2013) and other innovations in synthetic biology. For example, living collections of phototrophic algae, which have a low production cost and use only sunlight to fix atmospheric carbon, are promising candidates for the manufacture of bioproducts, such as biofuels, through genetic engineering or synthetic biology (Wang et al., 2012).

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7 A biological part that has been refined in order to conform to one or more defined technical standards.

8 See https://igem.org/Main_Page.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

Microalgal biofactories have the potential to become sustainable platforms that could produce certain plant-derived products (Vavitsas et al., 2018) and drive the establishment of an algal-based bioeconomy at some point in the future.

Inspiring and Informing Novel Designs

Biological collections provide a largely untapped reservoir of successful solutions to nature’s challenges and thus inspiration for biomimetics—the extraction of “good ideas” from nature to solve human problems (e.g., Green et al., 2019). Both natural history collections, including fossils, and living collections are potential sources of innovation, with applications in such areas as textiles, advanced materials, aerospace, electronics, and even wound care through the use of biofilms from living stocks. Earth’s diverse species have developed, through adaptations, unique solutions to a wide variety of problems—solutions that are often beyond the human imagination—and human innovators have turned to biomimicry for decades, for example, in the application of animal locomotion to adhesion science (e.g., Autumn et al., 2002, 2014; Peattie and Full, 2007) and in the use of fungi in mathematical studies of fluid dynamics (Roper et al., 2015). Today, there is a new emphasis on biomimicry with the goal of accelerating the transfer between nature and technology by applying direct applications from diverse collections (Green et al., 2019). With billions of specimens in natural history collections worldwide, the phenotypic diversity is immense, and the digitization of these collections is increasing their accessibility for biomimetic work (Hedrick et al., 2020). Particularly relevant are two-dimensional, three-dimensional, and computed tomography images of specimens, while other materials from natural history collections, such as field notes with habitat descriptions, provide the backdrop for understanding phenotypes in the context of their environments. Examples include research on optical biomimetics aimed at improving the performance of reflectors, which has involved the analysis of iridescence in collections of beetles, butterflies, and even the fruits of the marble berry plant (e.g., Diah et al., 2014; Ingram and Parker, 2008; McNamara et al., 2014; Zhang et al., 2014), and also efforts to engineer materials for use under extreme environments, which have incorporated collections of deep-water sponges and corals (Ceballos et al., 2017). Analyses of the integumentary scales of insect specimens using synchrotron small-angle X-ray scattering and electron microscopy have found high structural diversity at the nanoscale, revealing novel polymer and lipid structures with potential applications to biosensing (Forster et al., 2010; Saranathan et al., 2012, 2015; Vukusic and Sambles, 2003). Robotics also takes inspiration from many biological structures and processes made accessible by living and natural history specimens. For instance, biological collections provide diverse resources for the study of bite force and tooth microwear, including studies on humans (Tanis et al., 2018). New partnerships between engineers and the collections community are emerging, with calls from the biomimetic community for increased funding for collections to support fieldwork, for the acquisition of new specimens, for digitization, and for the interpretation of phenotypes and adaptations (Green et al., 2019).

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

Widening Understanding of Complex Societal Issues

From reconstructing and analyzing important historical changes to direct applications in national security or human and animal health, biological collections are a physical, digital, and intellectual resource that can enable innovation in translational research (Green et al., 2019; Riojas et al., 2019; Wu et al., 2017) for the benefit of science and society. This next section describes research and innovations to which biological collections have contributed, that are informing, and can confidently be predicted to inform, complex societal issues in the future.

Understanding and Forecasting Effects of Global Change

Biological collections are essential to fundamental research on Earth’s ever-changing environment (Lister, 2011; Moritz et al., 2008) and on changes in the distribution and diversity of species over time, including research focused on forecasting these changes (Meineke, 2018b). Estimates indicate that 75 percent of terrestrial areas and 66 percent of the oceans have been significantly changed, due primarily to agriculture and food consumption, and that some 690 vertebrate species and 571 species of plants have been driven to extinction in the past 500 years, with an estimated 1 million more extinctions expected by the end of the 21st century (Humphreys et al., 2019; IPBES, 2019).9 An increasing awareness that Earth is changing has led to calls for rigorous assessments of how these changing conditions, including the loss of biodiversity, will affect the many ecosystem services that humans rely on (Humphreys et al., 2019; IPBES, 2019). Natural history specimens have been referred to as “biological filter paper”: as organisms interact with their local environments throughout their lives, they accumulate a record of environmental conditions that can be interrogated through both established and emerging technologies, including chemical, physical, and molecular analyses (see Box 1-1). For example, hormones can be extracted from decades-old natural history collections, making it possible to infer the physiological state of the individuals at the time of capture (Schmitt et al., 2018), and marine macroalgae from herbaria can be processed with new techniques to provide a historical account of ocean conditions (Miller et al., 2020a). As described above, every biological collection specimen represents the occurrence of a unique individual and species at a particular time and location; as such, these specimens provide some of the best windows available into environmental quality and changing conditions (Edwards et al., 2005; Schmitt et al., 2018).

The degree to which collections can enable transformative research, an understanding of changes in biodiversity, and the development of efficient conservation plans depends, in part, on the continuity of the collections in time and space, because having continuous records of environmental and biological changes is important in all of these areas (Bakker et al., 2020). Despite there being more

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9 See https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/blog/2019/05/nature-decline-unprecedentedreport.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

than 1 billion specimens held in the United States (Owens and Johnson, 2019) for both living and natural history collections, biological collections need to continue growing so that records of changing conditions on Earth can be maintained and extended, and the collecting practices of the collections need to be strategically developed and modified in order to reduce sampling and taxonomic biases in the collections (Nekola et al., 2019) and to provide geographically and temporally comprehensive baselines of biodiversity on which future studies can be based (Bakker et al., 2020; Schindel and Cook, 2018). More than simply establishing baselines in the recent past to understand changes in today’s world, collections also provide windows into change in the past, including how ecosystems and societies have adapted and evolved, or not, when faced with change.

One way in which biological collections are being used to develop more complete and effective records of change can be seen in the way that regional hubs organize continual surveying and re-surveying across the nation and across the globe. For example, the Grinnell Resurvey Project, conducted by scientists at the University of California, Berkeley, Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, has documented substantial changes in elevation, abundance, body size, and distributional range of diverse vertebrates in Yosemite National Park and other sites in California, based on comparisons of species ranges inferred from specimens collected 100 years ago with specimens from the past decade (Moritz et al., 2008; Riddell et al., 2019; Rowe et al., 2015). Likewise, herbarium records have documented extensive changes in flowering time associated with increasing global temperatures, even on local scales, such as in the Boston, Massachusetts, area during the past century (Primack et al., 2004). Investigations using U.S. and international museum collections and private collections were the first to demonstrate how species respond to climate change by shifting locations, adapting to new conditions, or experiencing local extirpation (Parmesan, 1996).

Natural history collections, whose specimens range from fungi to dinosaurs and from bacteria to sequoias, are like libraries that chronicle the history of life on Earth. The more than 1 billion specimens in U.S. collections span the globe and provide a window into the past through both paleontological collections and collections of living specimens collected over the past three centuries (Owens and Johnson, 2019). These latter collections provide a veritable time capsule for the study of adaptation, response to climate change, and more. Notably, information about the occurrences of fossil marine taxa extracted from specimen-based literature was the basis for the identification of the five mass extinctions in Earth’s history (Raup and Sepkoski, 1982). Paleontologists have used collections of fossil specimens to examine how organisms have responded to past climate change (e.g., Peppe et al., 2011; Saupe et al., 2014, 2015). By providing records of historic and contemporary species distributions, records tied to geographic localities can be used for ecological niche modeling. In addition, preserved samples can be examined using new technologies to explore environmental tolerances. Collectively, biological collections can help forecast how individual species will respond to changing conditions in the future (Humphreys et al., 2019; IPBES, 2019; Schmitt et al., 2018; Tollefson et al., 2019).

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

Monitoring Change in Environmental Quality

Biological collections play a critical role in providing clues for environmental health studies,10 allowing closure of the gaps between evidence of exposure to contaminants and regulations. Chemists, particularly those interested in public health, pollution, toxins, heavy metals, and recent environmental change, find abundant uses for biological collections (Ławniczak et al., 2020; Schmitt et al., 2018). This is exemplified by the creation around the world of environmental specimen banks, which provide crucial data for contaminant monitoring, prioritization, and environmental research (Becker and Wise, 2006; Odsjö, 2006; Tanabe, 2006). An example that still makes headlines is the concerning presence of mercury deposition in fish. Varying levels of mercury contamination can be evaluated by comparing archived specimens in natural history collections with contemporary specimens, and this can, in turn, be used to inform policymakers (EPA, 2002; Stoner, 2002). Animals such as raptors (birds of prey, owls, and scavengers), canaries, or fish are known to be excellent sentinels of local environmental quality, including the presence of contaminants (Rabinowitz et al., 2009; Vo et al., 2011). Soot deposited on bird specimens, for example, has been used to track the rise and fall of atmospheric black carbon over the past 135 years (DuBay et al., 2017), while changes in the level of organic mercury have been tracked for more than a century by measuring mercury levels in the feathers of historical albatross specimens (Vo et al., 2011). Similarly, half a century ago a retrospective study on eggshell thickness from archived samples of bird eggs indicated a marked decrease in shell thickness coincident with the onset of widespread dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane use (Hickey and Anderson, 1968; Ratcliffe, 1967) (see Box 5-1), and this finding led to rapid policy changes in the use of chemical pesticides and herbicides. In short, collectively, biological collections are a valuable resource for the biomonitoring of contaminants over time and space.

Ensuring Food Security and Crop Management

Food security is a major global challenge that will become even more acute as the human population exceeds a projected 9 billion by 2050 (UN DESA, 2019), with the estimated demand for food rising by 70–100 percent (Valin et al., 2014). Compounding this increasing need will be changing climatic conditions that will limit food production in regions where crops are currently grown (Lobell et al., 2011; Scheffers et al., 2016; Vermeulen et al., 2018) and that may allow new agricultural pests to become established and persist. Efforts in plant breeding, plant pathology, and pest control have long relied on biological collections—herbarium specimens, seed banks, entomological collections, crop and livestock germplasm collections, and living stocks of bacteria and fungi—for crop improvement and disease control and prevention and will continue to do so in novel ways. A mainstay of crop improvement, whether for increased

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10 The study of factors in our environment that can affect human health and disease.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

yield, drought tolerance, disease resistance, or production in new regions, is the incorporation of wild germplasm through breeding programs with closely related wild species (e.g., Ford-Lloyd et al., 2011; Warschefsky et al., 2014). Herbarium records provide information on where these wild relatives occur and are used to develop expeditions for collecting new wild germplasm (Ramírez-Villegas et al., 2010, 2020). In some cases new germplasm, discovered through herbarium collections, can lead to cultivar improvement worth millions of dollars per year, as was the case, for example, with a new tomato hybrid (NatSCA, 2005). As climatic conditions change, cultivars may no longer be suited to regions where they are currently grown, and new assessments matching cultivars with locations will be needed. Ecological niche modeling using a combination of crop locations and crop herbarium specimens will be important for predicting where crops may best be suited in the future (e.g., Aguirre-Liguori et al., 2019; Vincent et al., 2019). Moreover, modeling that incorporates digitized herbarium data for crop wild relatives may aid in the selection of new germplasm for helping crops meet the challenges of a changing climate; wild relatives that offer greater drought tolerance or adaptation to higher temperatures—identified through analyses based on herbarium records—may be especially valuable as breeding sources for new crops.

Managing Crop Pathogens and Pests

Biological collections are also important for identifying, tracking, and managing crop pathogens (Ristaino, 2020; Salgado-Salazar et al., 2018). Emerging plant pathogens, while always a threat to food security, are an increasing concern in today’s world, particularly as climate change alters the conditions under which potential pathogens interact with crops. In some cases, the disease agents are not clear, and comparisons with fungi, bacteria, and viruses held in living stock collections are necessary to identify the cause of a disease and to develop treatments and eradication measures. Tracking the spread of plant pathogens has, in some cases, involved the use of plant and fungal herbarium specimens as sources of fungal or bacterial pathogens (Ristaino, 2020). For example, citrus canker, caused by the bacterium Xanthomonas axonopodis, is a serious disease of citrus trees. Using herbarium specimens of infected citrus trees, Li et al. (2007) identified extensive genetic diversity in the pathogen, traced the spread of the disease, and cautioned plant quarantine agencies about the persistence of local genotypes. Natural history observations, gained in part through biological collections, have been key to the development of successful integrated pest management and biological control (Tewksbury et al., 2014), which in turn have resulted in increased crop yields (Pretty et al., 2006).

Improving National Safety and Public Health Capabilities

Because estimates indicate that nearly 75 percent of all newly emergent pathogens in humans are from wildlife (Jones et al., 2008), specimens can play

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

a primary role in mitigating zoonotic diseases. Biological collections contribute unique and invaluable insights to the study of pathogens for humans, animals, and plants by providing a vast library of diverse samples for pathologists, disease ecologists, and epidemiologists. Importantly, collections can help researchers fundamentally transform how they approach emergent diseases, from the purely reactive measures that are now normally employed after a pathogen emerges to a more predictive framework that will make it possible to forecast future emergence and associated epidemics (Brooks et al., 2019; Glass et al., 2006; Kutz et al., 2004; Morse et al., 2012). As the frequency of disease outbreak increases (Smith et al., 2014), due in part to human alterations of ecosystems and wildlife trafficking (Johnson et al., 2015; Karesh et al., 2005; Myers et al., 2013), the contribution of archived and newly collected biological collections is becoming critical to national security and global economies. Estimates of the cost of the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) outbreak alone range from $5 billion to $50 billion (Pike et al., 2014), but the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, produced by SARS coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), already has taken a much greater financial and human toll in the United States (Schwartz, 2019) and worldwide.

With their associated databases, collections critically tie discoveries of new pathogens to permanent host specimens and, in turn, to a series of bioinformatics resources (e.g., GenBank and geographic information system applications) that allow for more robust exploration, identification, tracking, and public health responses to zoonotic pathogens (Dunnum et al., 2017). At the time of the 2001 anthrax attack in the United States, specimens collected decades before allowed researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to quickly identify the strain involved in the attack (Hoffmaster et al., 2002). Collections facilitate identification and knowledge of the distributional limits of the reservoirs, vectors, and pathogens in addition to their surveillance over time. As climate change transforms global environments, disease dynamics and pathogen distributions will change (Kraemer et al., 2015), and a robust biodiversity infrastructure will be needed that is spatially broad and temporally deep in order to interpret emergence under these newly evolving conditions. Collections provide an essential baseline for monitoring and understanding the dynamics of diseases caused by pathogens carried by mosquitoes, ticks, fleas, snails, bats, or rodents and other organisms (Anderson et al., 2001; Durden et al., 1996; Yanagihara et al., 2014; Yates et al., 2002).

Culture collections provide a critical and robust platform with which to preserve newly emergent strains and also distribute materials in response to public emergencies, including providing the tools needed to diagnose and control diseases. For example, the 1918 influenza strain, which was originally thought to be of avian origin, was subsequently found to be similar to contemporary swine influenza strains (Fanning et al., 2002; Taubenberger et al., 1997), which directed researchers to effective countermeasure strategies (Ferguson et al., 2003). In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Biodefense and Emerging Infections Research Resources Repository (BEI Resources) added to its catalog

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

the first clinical isolate from a patient in the United States along with its genomic RNA, recombinant proteins, and quantitative synthetic RNA for diagnostic assay development and validation. These reagents complement 90 coronavirus-related items available for distribution worldwide to allow researchers to develop vaccines, treatment options, antivirals, and diagnostic assays. Humanity’s painful experience with COVID-19 has starkly revealed the limits of our knowledge of planetary biodiversity and the urgent need to build more robust biodiversity infrastructure and connect it to public health initiatives.

Understanding Complex Microbial Communities

The microbiome is another area in which biological collections are playing a key role. Both repositories of microbial isolates from diverse microbiomes (e.g., bacteria, fungi, and phages from the Human Microbiome Project11) and collections based on the concept of the extended specimen are being examined for microbiome symbionts (Lutz et al., 2017). Microbe and plant collections are also being used in studies of plant–microbe interactions such as the work done by the Phytobiomes Alliance,12 which aims at improving crop health and productivity (Schlaeppi and Bulgarelli, 2015). Such studies produce large amounts of sequencing data, which show the presence of a large variety of microbes. To further complicate these studies, only a very small fraction of these organisms can be grown in the lab or without the presence of other microbes—and many of them have not even been classified (Cross et al., 2019; Wade et al., 2016). In these cases, the nucleic acid sequences become the sole record of the existence of such microbes, making the databases that store these sequences a new type of biological collection (Alverdy and Chang, 2008). Specimens in microbial collections are also used to generate reference databases for microbiome analysis: thousands of DNA sequences generated from a single sample such as a surface swab or fecal sample are compared with those in a reference database such as UNITE.13 Curated reference databases consist of DNA sequences, which are linked to species names and collection specimens, from which users can glean relevant information such as the potential for pathogenicity against humans, plants, or animals; habitat range; and tolerance of temperatures, salinity, or osmolarity.

Unanticipated Use of Biological Collections

Technological innovation will continue to increase our ability to extract information from samples and expand our knowledge by addressing questions that were not even envisioned when specimens were originally collected (i.e., serendipity), just as specimens collected centuries ago are today used in new ways, such as genomics, unimaginable at the time of collection. New species

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11 See https://hmpdacc.org.

12 See https://phytobiomesalliance.org.

13 See https://unite.ut.ee.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

of plants, insects, fossils, and even mammals critical for our understanding of the history of life are discovered in natural history collections, often archived decades before their recognition as a new species (Bebber et al., 2010; Burgin et al., 2018; Fontaine et al., 2012). The same is true for microbial collections. In 2019, 128 historical bacterial collections from ATCC and the BEI Resources catalogs, some almost a century old, were identified using novel technologies. A phylogenetic analysis of sequences from these collections generated major taxonomic changes from the identification of new species and subspecies to numerous re-classifications (Riojas et al., 2019, 2020), thus making these collections useful for future study and demonstrating why long-term sustainability of physical infrastructure is so critical. Although some living stock specimens or their related biological resources may not be frequently used, many collection curators can point to several examples of materials that were at one point deemed of little research use, but later became essential. For example, Zika virus was an obscure isolate in living stock collections that for 60 years was rarely requested until it came to worldwide attention during the Zika outbreak in 2015 (see Box 2-2). Other examples of strains that experienced a surge in use decades after deposit include Thermus aquaticus ATCC® 25104™, which harbors a thermostable DNA polymerase (PMID: 5781580; Stern, 2004) at the core of modern biotechnology (see Box 1-2), and Neurospora strains in the Fungal Genetics Stock Center (FGSC) collection with the historic os-2 mutation that confers resistance to fungicides (McCluskey and Plamann, 2008). For such unanticipated discoveries from both natural history and living collections to continue, specimens need to be collected with a more diverse set of research objectives in mind, from stable isotopes and transcriptome and epigenetic studies to host–parasite interactions, microbiome diversity, and dynamics of biological communities. To future-proof this critical infrastructure, the biological collections community needs to engage diverse research communities to understand best strategies and priorities for sampling contemporary biodiversity to build collections with maximum utility in the future.

EVALUATING THE IMPACT

The breadth of contributions to the scientific enterprise and education (see Chapter 3) is one of the major arguments for enhancing and ensuring the long-term vitality of the nation’s biological collections. However, that breadth also raises the question of how one can measure the impact of biological collections, documenting what are often invisible or unrecognized contributions, based on very tangible specimens and data. That is, are the collections truly making a difference, and, if so, how big a difference?

Many individual biological collections gather various metrics to document their productivity and the extent to which specimens and their associated data are accessed and used by the research community. For example, metrics typically gathered by natural history collections include visits, loans, specimens examined, and orders filled, among others (see Box 2-3). These metrics may be designated as indicators of uses of the collection for research, teaching, or outreach

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

and are often compiled for annual reports to institutional and funding authorities to document short-term activities and for collections advocacy. Some biological collections track and document the use of specimens and their associated biological materials and data through published citations. Specimens in natural history collections and strains in living collections have unique numbers that can be tracked in the literature. In addition, many biological collections require users to acknowledge the collection when publishing, although this mandate is not always followed. For example, the FGSC established an online bibliography14

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14 See http://www.fgsc.net/cite.htm.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

documenting the use of fungal strains, and it directs scientists to cite a published journal article in order to acknowledge the FGSC (McCluskey et al., 2010). There are not yet widely adopted standards and processes for citation, but technology offers some solutions, such as mobile apps and other mechanisms for inputting, viewing, and retrieving information on collections use. Today, living collections and natural history collections have begun to use data aggregators such as Google Scholar to compile research publications that result from collections-based work (Winker and Withrow, 2013). Electronic citation and tracking of digital specimen records, each with a unique identifier, provide attribution to local collections and enable the assessment of short- and long-term impacts both locally and nationally (see also Chapter 5). The Analyzer of Bio-resource Citations15 of the World Data Center for Microorganisms is a database of publications and patents that cite biological collections and specific specimens (Wu et al., 2017). As of August 1, 2020, more than 145,000 publications had referenced 79,224 microbial strains belonging to 131 culture collections. In addition, more than 42,000 patents had referenced 44,508 microbial strains.16 The National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) also tracks DNA sequences deposited in GenBank that are associated with specimens from registered biological collections, through the NCBI BioCollections Database. Other citations and attribution

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15 See abc.wfcc.info.

16 ABC statistics update 2020—8-05 1:53:03 Analyzer of Bio-resource Citations.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

systems are in the early stages of development—occCite17 is one promising example of an online tool that tracks citations of biodiversity collections—but they cannot yet be implemented at large scales. However, the practice and the development of publication requirements from scientific journals on how to broadly implement citations are still in their infancy.

As detailed in the National Research Council report Furthering America’s Research Enterprise (NRC, 2014c), scientific impact results from multiple processes over time, and identifying the specific metrics necessary to capture that impact requires careful dissection of the goals, timeframes, and outcomes of the research. Measuring the impact of scientific infrastructure, such as the nation’s biological collections, may be even more challenging because the collections’ purposes, goals, and scale can vary greatly. However, a substantial body of work provides evidence, resources, considerations, and best practices for evaluating and selecting appropriate metrics that could be successfully implemented by biological collections (Guthrie et al., 2013; NRC, 2005, 2010, 2014c).

Evaluation is typically an iterative process that requires advanced commitment and planning. The first step in developing an evaluation plan is to define the goals and intended outcomes of a biological collection that are fully integrated with the purposes of the evaluation (see Table 2-1). Outcomes may be categorized as short term, midterm, and long term, depending on the estimated time horizons necessary to achieve them. The second step is to develop an evaluation framework. There are a variety of evidence-based evaluation frameworks, each with distinct strengths and limitations (Guthrie et al., 2013; NRC, 2014c). In general, all evaluation frameworks demonstrate the relationships among goals, the available resources (inputs), the planned activities and services, and the intended outcomes. The third step is to develop evaluation questions. These questions relate to various points along the continuum from inputs to the intended outcomes and impacts, and they clarify the scope of the evaluation. Table 2-1 provides examples of evaluation questions that may be important for different components along the continuum from inputs to desired impacts for a biological collection.

Evaluation questions need to produce answers that are measurable. Hence, the fourth and final step of evaluation planning is to identify appropriate metrics—the quantitative or qualitative measurements used in the answers to evaluation questions. Metrics can be measurements of biological collections’ processes (e.g., the quantity and amount of external grants, the number of accessions and loans, perceptions of collections efficiency and efficacy) or products (e.g., the number of publications, the contribution to major meta-analyses, the percentage of collections-trained students who chose careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics). Assessing the answers to evaluation questions usually requires a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods, including the analysis of routinely collected metrics data. Some of the most powerful metrics for evaluating biological collections could be qualitative. For example, sentiments about the ease of use of specimen data portals would be important information related to improving access to data for different types of uses. Evaluators often look for

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17 See https://hannahlowens.github.io/occCite.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

TABLE 2-1 Key Evaluation Terminology and Example Questionsa

Term Definition Examples Evaluation Questions
Process Components Inputs The resources needed for program planning and processes.
  • Strategic plans
  • Budget
  • Specimens
  • Personnel
  • Facilities and cyberinfrastructure
  • What is the quality of the inputs?
  • Are the inputs sufficient?
  • Are the inputs sustainable?
Activities The events, services, or functions that take place.
  • Strategic planning and evaluation
  • Collecting and accessions
  • Distributing specimens
  • Digitizing and building data portals
  • Research
  • Teaching, training, and mentoring
  • Are these processes efficient?
  • Are these processes effective?
  • Are the activities proceeding as planned? If not, why?
  • Which activities strengthen collaborative networks?
Outputs The direct products of the activities. Outputs can be subdivided into knowledge, infrastructure, or workforce.
  • Research-accessible collections
  • Publications and presentations
  • Tools, methods, and standards
  • Databases and data portals
  • Collections staff professional development
  • Which outputs have been produced?
  • What is the quantity, cost, timeliness, and quality of what has been produced?
  • Who is the target audience for each type of output?
Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×
Term Definition Examples Evaluation Questions
Outcome Components Outcomes The intended effects on people, communities, or institutions as a result of the outputs. Outcomes can be subdivided by when they are most likely expected to occur: short term, midterm, or long term.
  • Meta-analyses (analyses that combine data from multiple studies)
  • Improved body of collections-based knowledge
  • Serendipitous discoveries
  • Expanded network of collections users
  • Strengthened collections-based research community
  • To what extent are the target audiences aware of the outputs?
  • Have the target audiences used the outputs at least once? Has their knowledge or behavior changed after use?
  • Are target audiences satisfied with the outputs and accompanying services?
  • Where has the use of the collection(s) enabled tackling new research questions, making discoveries, finding solutions to challenges in applied research?
  • Have research networks been strengthened?
  • Have participants entered the STEM workforce?
Impacts The broader changes in communities, systems, or society that stem from the outcomes. Impacts do not directly result from outcomes, but from multiple interacting factors within and outside of a program or institution.
  • Improved quality of specimen-based resources for research
  • Broader participation in STEM
  • Greater protection of biodiversity and the environment
  • Prevention and control of human and wildlife infectious diseases
  • Increased economic competitiveness
  • How much have specific observed outcomes contributed to improved research, scientific leadership, human health, environmental protection, or improved businesses?
  • What evidence demonstrates that the collection(s) contributed to improved quantity and quality of research?

aThis table indicates that there are two primary pathways to documenting the outcomes and impact of collections: research and education. However, the table focuses primarily on research. Additional discussion of documenting the outcomes and impact of education is provided in Chapter 3.

NOTE: STEM = science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

sets of metrics, sometimes called indicators, to develop more comprehensive answers about the targeted outcomes.

Measuring Comprehensive Impact

Efforts to assess the impact of scientific research are now reaching broadly beyond academia to include comprehensive impact, that is, the impact of scientific research on all of human society and the natural environment, including the effects on the economy, health, policy, and society more generally (e.g., Ravenscroft et al., 2017). Although measuring comprehensive impact is difficult and the methods to do so are still in their infancy, the U.S. STAR METRICS program is an example of a platform that may eventually assess the impact of federal research funding on employment, society, and the economy through an analysis of factors such as health outcomes, student mobility, patents, and industry startups (Lane and Bertuzzi, 2011). Other attempts to assess comprehensive impact are also under development.

Biological collections now have an opportunity to learn from new developments in the field of assessment and go beyond usage statistics and measure impact. Given the increasing and diversifying use of collections and the community’s newly generated digital assets, this is an excellent time to connect evaluation experts with the collections community to apply evidence-based approaches to assessing the impact and interpreting metrics. Creating spaces and opportunities to exchange ideas and share best practices would facilitate the evaluation process. Moreover, the time is also perfect to develop national goals and desired outcomes and to build a cyberinfrastructure-supported method for the citation and attribution of digital specimen records and for assessing the collective impact of biological collections.

A Community-Wide Vision

Although individual biological collections may vary in their specific goals and desired outcomes, they share the goal of providing effective and impactful access to physical and digital objects for use in research, innovation, and education. Given this shared goal, along with nascent connections among many collections stemming from NSF’s Advancing Digitization of Biodiversity Collections program, the collections community has the opportunity to develop a community-wide vision for evaluating its collective impact and how to measure it. The federal Interagency Working Group on Scientific Collections is in the process of documenting outcomes and impact of only federal science collections, based on existing metrics. The federal work could provide important input into a broader effort to evaluate the nation’s biological collections. In addition, the collections community can build on the experiences of other networks that have attempted to shape and measure community-wide impact. For example, research on how to achieve change collaboratively has been explored (e.g., Guarneros-Meza et al., 2018; Sullivan and Skelcher, 2002), with possible lessons and benefits for

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

the biological collections community. More specifically, the library special collections and archives community, through professional societies (e.g., the Association of College & Research Libraries of the American Library Association and the Society of American Archivists) have collaboratively developed, aggregated, and leveraged metrics, and their approach can offer guidance to the community-wide process of evaluation for the biological collections community. Tackling metrics as a community would lessen impediments due to limited resources, personnel, and time; allow the community to take advantage of the knowledge of professional evaluators; and shape common outcomes that can be assessed both at individual collections and collectively.

Connect to National Endeavors

The scientific community, in general, is developing approaches to evaluate its performance and impact. As noted above, STAR METRICS is a U.S. government effort to create tools and a data repository to assess the impact of federal investments in research and development. Specifically, STAR METRICS examines the outcomes of federal investments in science on job creation and economic growth. Major efforts are also under way in other countries including Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom (NRC, 2014c).

Biological collections will need to communicate with other research endeavors that are having the same conversations about metrics. Connecting the conversation around metrics that we hope to spark in this report to larger, broader conversations already beginning to take place across the research landscape has the potential to lead to metrics that can be integrated across biology. Engaging in higher-order conversations about value and impact can help the collections community—and the scientific community at large—use resources more effectively and take greater advantage of public support. Unless the biological collections community participates meaningfully in these larger evaluation schemes, it risks isolating itself by only developing community-specific measures of impact. To the extent that different biological collections develop a set of shared metrics, they will benefit from selecting best practices or exemplars that show biological collections metrics activities that are consonant with the general discussions occurring about the impact of science.

CONCLUSION

Collectively, biological collections allow research to build and expand on decades of scientific advances and knowledge. Biological collections have a substantial legacy in producing a wide range of benefits for research in the United States and the global community. If biological collections are to effectively promote and expand their contributions and impact, it will require ongoing investment, comprehensive planning, and dedicated stewardship. The global collections community, funding agencies (e.g., NSF, the National Institutes of Health, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and federal natural

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

resource agencies (e.g., the Department of Agriculture) need to create a partnership to implement a coordinated plan to encourage the strategic growth of collections to support all areas of life science research including genetics, cell biology, biotechnology, and synthetic biology as well as a rigorous assessment of dynamic change in planetary diversity, ecosystems, and biomes. Analytical capabilities (both tools and training) to enable transformative research using biological collections and associated data will be needed to ensure that biological collections are rigorously archived to fuel the greatest diversity of new technologies and approaches. Mass digitization and the expansion of innovative digital platforms can broaden the use of collections and engage virtual communities worldwide. To document and monitor such successes, the biological collections community will need to embrace formal evaluations of its impacts through collaborative approaches. Establishing partnerships with professional evaluators and mechanisms to share resources and exchange ideas will be critical for developing the appropriate tools for evaluating the current roles that biological collections play in research and education as well as for strategically expanding those roles in the future.

Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×

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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Page 59
Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Page 61
Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×
Page 64
Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×
Page 66
Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
×
Page 67
Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Page 68
Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Suggested Citation:"2 Advancing Discovery, Inspiring Innovation, and Informing Societal Challenges." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25592.
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Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century Get This Book
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Biological collections are a critical part of the nation's science and innovation infrastructure and a fundamental resource for understanding the natural world. Biological collections underpin basic science discoveries as well as deepen our understanding of many challenges such as global change, biodiversity loss, sustainable food production, ecosystem conservation, and improving human health and security. They are important resources for education, both in formal training for the science and technology workforce, and in informal learning through schools, citizen science programs, and adult learning. However, the sustainability of biological collections is under threat. Without enhanced strategic leadership and investments in their infrastructure and growth many biological collections could be lost.

Biological Collections: Ensuring Critical Research and Education for the 21st Century recommends approaches for biological collections to develop long-term financial sustainability, advance digitization, recruit and support a diverse workforce, and upgrade and maintain a robust physical infrastructure in order to continue serving science and society. The aim of the report is to stimulate a national discussion regarding the goals and strategies needed to ensure that U.S. biological collections not only thrive but continue to grow throughout the 21st century and beyond.

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