Back in 2003, PHE’s Mark Stoeckle and Jesse Ausubel organized a pair of meetings at the Banbury Center with Paul Hebert, Norton Zinder and others on Taxonomy, DNA, and the Barcode of Life supported by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Mark led the writing of a December 2003 meeting report that envisioned “a world in which any person anywhere anytime can identify any species at little or not cost. That world is technologically upon us. This report addresses the formative stages of an initiative to bring this to society sooner rather than later.” In a breakthrough application of DNA barcoding, reported 3 February in the NY Times, “New York Attorney General Targets Supplements at Major Retailers.”
New York’s lead owes much to the work of George Amato at the American Museum of Natural History, Damon Little at the New York Botanical Garden, and Mark here at Rockefeller. Mark, Damon, and Selena Ahmed together with three terrific NY high school students pioneered use of barcoding for analysis of botanical products in their paper:
. Commercial Teas Highlight Plant DNA Barcode Identification Successes and Obstacles. Nature Scientific Reports 1:42 2011