Rockefeller University

Program for the Human Environment

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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Taxonomy without borders

341 researchers from 44 countries gathered for the Second International Barcode of Life Conference, held at Academia Sinica, Tapei, Taiwan on 17-21 September 2007 (program, participants, and abstracts at www.dnabarcodes2007.org).

Conference presentations highlighted a thrilling array of progress on diverse scientific and practical fronts since the First International Barcode of Life at The Natural History Museum, London, in February 2005 (London Conference proceedings in themed issue Phil Trans R Soc 360: 2005 available through Consortium for Barcode of Life (CBOL) website.  I found the Tapei conference to be a landmark demonstration of the value to society and science of a standardized, inexpensive approach to identifying species through DNA, ie DNA barcoding.  The Economist’s 20 September 2007 piece “Name, rank, and serial number” recaps results so far and looks ahead to near future societal benefits.  

Near the close of the conference, David Schindel, Executive Secretary for CBOL, referred to the DNA barcode initiative as “taxonomy without borders”. Just as removing security fences benefits African wildlife, standardized inexpensive technology for species identification, ie DNA barcoding, is helping remove barriers that balkanize taxonomy and limit public access to biological knowlege. The DNA barcode initiative, together with the Encyclopedia of Life which includes digitizing the world’s taxonomic literature are creating powerful new ways of seeing biodiversity, with benefits to society and science. 

I look forward to a future in which the multiple sectors of taxonomic and biodiversity science are densely linked to each other and public users.  

Adapted from Valdis Krebs, Emergent Online Community

This entry was posted on Friday, September 28th, 2007 at 12:10 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.