If I told you I worked in a multi-billion-dollar time machine, you might imagine some sort of space craft. But that isn't what my workplace looks like at all.
CSIRO achieves time-travel thanks to the generations of scientists, curators, collectors and naturalists who have amassed a comprehensive collection of Australia's flora and fauna. We call these 15 million specimens the National Research Collections Australia.
It is my job to study the past using these priceless preserved specimens. We use cutting-edge modern technologies to transform specimens into powerful tools for understanding the future of life on Earth.
The National Research Collections Australia hosted by CSIRO are always growing and with it, scientists are revolutionising how we unlock nature's time machine to tell us more about our biodiversity and how we can protect it.
Luckily for Australia, we now have a state-of-the-art building that brings our insect and wildlife collections under one roof with the highest level of design and protection for the specimens and magnificent facilities for scientists who work on them.
It has been a painstaking exercise to move the more than 13 million preserved specimens.
But it's a lot more than just a new building.
Taxonomy matters: accounting for Australia's biodiversity
Australia's ancient land mass is one of the most biodiverse places on the planet, millions of years in the making.
About 75 per cent of species are endemic, they exist nowhere else.
What you might be surprised to know is that only about 10 percent of insects have been described. In contrast, approximately 90 per cent of vertebrate species are known to science, but cryptic diversity exists and some taxa (fish, for example) are incredibly specious.
We have a lot of work ahead.
As the saying goes, you can't protect what you don't know. This is why continued collecting expeditions are essential to the collections. We have enough empty cabinets to grow our collection over the next two decades, fit-for-purpose for long-term specimen storage in our new building. What we collect and preserve today will be available for study, into the next century and beyond.
Genomics: decoding the past for future conservation
As an evolutionary biologist I'm excited by the centre piece of the new building, the new genomics laboratories which include a trace DNA lab for museomics research.
My team has invented techniques to investigate historical gene expression in preserved specimens . These data allow scientists to uncover how organisms have responded to environmental changes over time by examining which genes were turned on or off in response to stressors such as climate change, habitat loss and pollution.
We can extract epigenetic signals from frogs, fish, mammals, reptiles and birds collected more than a century ago, giving us insight into how species have adapted—or failed to adapt—to a changing world.
Until recently, scientists thought it was impossible to extract and sequence DNA from samples preserved using formaldehyde. But we have turned this assumption on its head , instead using the preservation properties to detect ancient signals of how organisms function. What used to be a molecular roadblock is now an opportunity.
My work has focused on water dragons. We've been able to extract and compare DNA from 100-year-old specimens in Brisbane with specimens from today in the same and other locations.
For those of us on the east coast who know and love water dragons , we can look at the climate and environment of the specimens at the time and look at their gene expression to tell us how they have adapted to urbanisation or changes in climate.
Over the course of nine years, this and our other museomics advances have doubled the molecular accessibility of our wildlife collection. Now that we've published our techniques, that's doubling the molecular accessibility for collections globally.
The co-location of CSIRO's collections with a high-tech molecular lab at Diversity enables this kind of groundbreaking work. 
Collections enabling biodiversity monitoring
Another recent leap in molecular capability is the new science of environmental DNA (eDNA). These technologies allow scientists to detect species in an ecosystem using traces of DNA left behind in air, water or soil—without needing to see or capture the organism itself.
Collections and eDNA technology are perfect partners – because every specimen in the collection acts as a reference barcode to help us identify what we're picking up in the environment. Together CSIRO's collections, data infrastructure and molecular expertise make eDNA science more accurate and effective.
Biodiversity for biodiscovery: medical breakthroughs hiding in nature
In addition to biodiversity and conservation science, the collections support biodiscovery—the search for novel compounds in nature that could lead to medical breakthroughs.
Scientists working in the insect collection are examining venom molecules from spider wasps stored in the collection, which may hold potential for treating conditions such as Alzheimer's and epilepsy.
Collections for the future of Australia's biodiversity
We are experiencing the fastest rate of biodiversity loss that the world has ever experienced.
As an island, we have more chance of preventing invasive species where other places have failed to protect their biodiversity.
This natural advantage gives us the possibility of succeeding to protect our biodiversity on a grand scale in Australia.
This collection is doing more than preserving Australia's biodiversity, we're using these specimens to understand its resilience, and what it will take to protect it.
Understanding the trajectory of species and whether or not they are going to survive is complicated and requires interdisciplinary research.
This new facility is bringing together scientists from many disciplines and is a new chapter in Australian science —one where the past is alive with answers for the future.
The new National Research Collections Australia facility was jointly funded by CSIRO and the Department of Education through the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) .
Dr Clare Holleley is an evolutionary biologist who specialises in historical epigenomics and the epigenetics of environmentally controlled reptile sex determination. She leads the Temporal Epigenomics team at the Australian National Wildlife Collection within CSIRO.
