Top Ten
- Works with fragments. Barcoding can identify a species from bits and pieces. When established, barcoding will quickly identify undesirable animal or plant material in processed foodstuffs and detect commercial products derived from regulated species. Barcoding will help reconstruct food cycles by identifying fragments in stomachs and assist plant science by identifying roots sampled from soil layers.
- Works for all stages of life. Barcoding can identify a species in its many forms, from eggs and seed, through larvae and seedlings, to adults and flowers.
- Unmasks look-alikes. Barcoding can distinguish among species that look alike, uncovering dangerous organisms masquerading as harmless ones and enabling a more accurate view of biodiversity.
- Reduces ambiguity. Written as a sequence of four discrete nucleotides – CATG – along a uniform locality on genomes, a barcode of life provides a digital identifying feature, supplementing the more analog gradations of words, shapes and colors. A library of digital barcodes will provide an unambiguous reference that will facilitate identifying species invading and retreating across the globe and through centuries.
- Makes expertise go further. The bewildering diversity of about 2 million species already known confines even an expert to morphological identification of only a small part of the plant and animal kingdoms. Foreseeing millions more species to go, scientists can equip themselves with barcoding to speed identification of known organisms and facilitate rapid recognition of new species.
- Democratizes access. A standardized library of barcodes will empower many more people to call by name the species around them. It will make possible identification of species whether abundant or rare, native or invasive, engendering appreciation of biodiversity locally and globally.
- Opens the way for an electronic handheld field guide, the Life Barcoder. Barcoding links biological identification to advancing frontiers in DNA sequencing, miniaturization in electronics, and computerized information storage. Integrating those links will lead to portable desktop devices and ultimately to hand-held barcoders. Imagine the promise of a schoolchild with a barcoder in hand learning to read wild biodiversity, the power granted to a field ecologist surveying with a barcoder and global positioning system, or the security imparted by a port inspector with a barcoder linked to a central computer!
- Sprouts new leaves on the tree of life. Since Darwin, biologists seeking a natural system of classification have drawn genealogical trees to represent evolutionary history. Barcoding the similarities and differences among the nearly 2 million species already named will provide a wealth of genetic detail, helping to draw the tree of life on Earth. Barcoding newly discovered species will help show where they belong among known species, sprouting new leaves on the tree of life.
- Demonstrates value of collections. Compiling the library of barcodes begins with the multimillions of specimens in museums, herbaria, zoos and gardens, and other biological repositories. The spotlight that barcoding shines on these institutions and their collections will strengthen their ongoing efforts to preserve Earth’s biodiversity.
- Speeds writing the encyclopedia of life. Compiling a library of barcodes linked to vouchered specimens and their binomial names will enhance public access to biological knowledge, helping to create an on-line encyclopedia of life on Earth, with a web page for every species of plant and animal.
About the Bar Code of Life 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 managed by Mark Stoeckle at the Program
for the Human Environment (PHE) at The Rockefeller University.
Contact: mark.stoeckle@rockefeller.edu
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.