DNA barcodes for plant and animal IDs
Heron with its barcode (Photo courtesy Biodiversity Institute of Ontario) Listen to an 11-minute podcast on why scientists want to create DNA barcodes for the millions of species of life on our planet.
Scientists hope to use what they’re calling “DNA barcodes” to help identify all of Earth’s plants and animals.
This “barcoding” is really a standardized genetic approach to identifying species by a small segment of DNA. This first paper about it was published in 2003. Mark Stoeckle is a molecular biologist at Rockefeller University in New York. He said some labs are starting to build up libraries of DNA sequences. One reason: of an estimated 10 million plant and animal species on Earth, so far science has named fewer than two million.
Mark Stoeckle: Sometimes there may be only one expert in the world who can identify a certain group of organisms. So, very specialized knowledge, very restrictive DNA barcoding is a way of democratizing that ability to identify things.
Stoeckle said that as DNA sequencing equipment miniaturizes, it might be possible to have a handheld DNA barcode reader. That’s at least 5 years away, he said.
Mark Stoeckle: It’s certainly easy with current information storage technology to store sequences and software for millions of species on a small hard drive like you would in your ipod.
Stoeckle said there are about 25,000 DNA barcodes collected so far.
Using this technique new species are already turning up, such as in Guyana, Africa, where a study found six new species of bats. With rare exception, a species is defined as a biological group which can interbreed and produce fertile offspring.
Our thanks to:
Mark Stoeckle
Rockefeller University
Program for the Human Environment
New York, NY
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When I first heard about this project, it sounded very much like science fiction to me. But quickly it became part of the reality I’ve come to accept and an interesting part of our role as humans on Earth today. It’s part of what we at Earth & Sky call the “human world.” Since our population numbers have grown so dramatically, and since we’ve now begun to alter all facets of life on Earth – mainly via our anthropogenic changing of Earth’s climate – it’s a very beautiful idea to me that scientists are trying to use the tools of modern technology to locate and categorize earthly life in this way …
Like so much that seems to be happening on Earth today, to me the DNA barcoding projects seems like a natural part of the evolution of this coupled system of which we humans are a part, here on Earth.