Cataloging Life

Cataloging Life Can a single barcode of DNA record biodiversity and keep us safe from poisons? By Bob Grant Related Articles 1 for soil nematodes, barcoding's genesis lies in a 2003 paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London2 by Paul Hebert, a Canadian researcher who some call "the father DNA barcoding," and colleagues. In that paper, Hebert's team proposed a universal animal barcode: a segment of roughly 650 base pairs of the mitochondria

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By Bob Grant

1 for soil nematodes, barcoding's genesis lies in a 2003 paper in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London2 by Paul Hebert, a Canadian researcher who some call "the father DNA barcoding," and colleagues. In that paper, Hebert's team proposed a universal animal barcode: a segment of roughly 650 base pairs of the mitochondrial gene, cytochrome c oxidase 1 (CO1). CO1 became an attractive candidate for a barcode because the primers used to amplify the gene fragment worked across many animal groups. Moreover, researchers had previously suggested that the gene evolved rapidly enough to allow for discrimination between even closely related species.

CO1 appeared to work well as a barcode, at least for some animals. Using butterflies and moths Hebert collected from his own Canadian backyard and other animal sequences listed in GenBank, he found that the region was highly variable between species but almost invariable within ...

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Meet the Author

  • Bob Grant

    From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer.

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