The Barcode Blog

A mostly scientific blog about short DNA sequences for species identification and discovery. I encourage your commentary. -- Mark Stoeckle

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Nature celebrates taxonomy as Carl Linnaeus turns 300, discovers DNA barcodes

A dozen articles in current issue of Nature examine the legacy of Carl Linnaeus, born 300 years ago this May. The wonderful cover illustration shows Carl Linnaeus as a modern field biologist in blue jeans and down vest, holding up a DNA barcode.  I am particularly struck by Charles Godfray’s “Linnaeus in the information age,” a wide-ranging, thoughtful, visionary and practical look at how taxonomy might evolve so as to provide the widest benefit to society. His near-term wish list includes “a comprehensive web-based taxonomic and identification resource (morphology plus DNA barcodes) for the world’s macrolepidoptera”, which “would be a wonderful lever for bringing new resources into the field.”  A central theme echoed in many of the pieces is the need for taxonomists to join together and create “big science” projects that benefit the many end-users of taxonomic knowledge.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 20th, 2007 at 12:29 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Contact: mark.stoeckle@rockefeller.edu

About this site

This web site is an outgrowth of the Taxonomy, DNA, and Barcode of Life meeting held at Banbury Center, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, September 9-12, 2003. It is designed and managed by Mark Stoeckle, Perrin Meyer, and Jason Yung at the Program for the Human Environment (PHE) at The Rockefeller University.

About the Program for the Human Environment

The involvement of the Program for the Human Environment in DNA barcoding dates to Jesse Ausubel's attendance in February 2002 at a conference in Nova Scotia organized by the Canadian Center for Marine Biodiversity. At the conference, Paul Hebert presented for the first time his concept of large-scale DNA barcoding for species identification. Impressed by the potential for this technology to address difficult challenges in the Census of Marine Life, Jesse agreed with Paul on encouraging a conference to explore the contribution taxonomy and DNA could make to the Census as well as other large-scale terrestrial efforts. In his capacity as a Program Director of the Sloan Foundation, Jesse turned to the Banbury Conference Center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, whose leader Jan Witkowski prepared a strong proposal to explore both the scientific reliability of barcoding and the processes that might bring it to broad application. Concurrently, PHE researcher Mark Stoeckle began to work with the Hebert lab on analytic studies of barcoding in birds. Our involvement in barcoding now takes 3 forms: assisting the organizational development of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life and the Barcode of Life Initiative; contributing to the scientific development of the field, especially by studies in birds, and contributing to public understanding of the science and technology of barcoding and its applications through improved visualization techniques and preparation of brochures and other broadly accessible means, including this website. While the Sloan Foundation continues to support CBOL through a grant to the Smithsonian Institution, it does not provide financial support for barcoding research itself or support to the PHE for its research in this field.