The Barcode of Life

February 12, 2005 8:14 PM

The Barcode of lifeis a short DNA sequence, from a uniform locality on the genome, used for identifying species. This can revolutionize taxonomy, if more people join the consortium and more species are added to the database. This device would be a biologist's Uber-pony. (via World Changing)
posted by dhruva (3 comments total)

this is very, very cool.
posted by blendor at 9:37 PM on February 12, 2005

I attended a talk given by Dr. Hebert, one of the proponents of the barcode project (some papers here and here) and it is certainly an exciting development.
However, some members of the field are concerned that scientists will rely on the barcode results to define species, instead of using it along with existing knowledge about the biology and ecology of species to define species. Defining a species based on the sequence of a single gene is generally considered to be insufficient, so it will be important to closely observe how this technology is used.
posted by nprigoda at 4:36 AM on February 13, 2005

meanwhile, if you search the front page for "barcode".... what's with the pseudo-double posts about DNA?
posted by rxrfrx at 7:21 AM on February 13, 2005