DNA barcodes: Creative new uses span health, fraud, smuggling, history, more

Scientists to seal historic agreement on plant barcodes; DNA in permafrost may reveal Earth's pre-historic Life

The scientific ability to quickly and accurately identify species through DNA "barcoding" is being embraced and applied by a growing legion of global authorities – from medical and agricultural researchers to police and customs authorities to palaeontologists and others.

Some 350 experts from 50 nations gathering in Mexico for their 3rd global meeting will outline the latest creative applications of DNA barcoding, including projects to sequence ancient plant and animal remains extracted from northern permafrost cores.

Using new techniques to identify species from degraded DNA, the results could reveal how life on Earth responded to global climate change in ages past.

Meanwhile, by analyzing the DNA of gut contents, scientists have started unravelling secrets of what eats what in the animal world.

The International Barcode of Life Project, headquartered in Guelph, Canada, where barcoding was pioneered, will present new research showing that eight bat species feed on over 300 types of insect – one of the largest food webs ever revealed. This extension of DNA barcoding to unravel complex dynamics in the wild is an exciting new research field with important conservation implications.

"DNA barcoding is opening a new window into the relations between hunter and prey in the wild and how diets may be changing due to climate change," says Scott Miller, Acting Under Secretary for Science at the Smithsonian Institution and Chair of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL).

CBOL is co-host of the Mexico City meeting Nov. 7-13 at the Mexican Academy of Sciences with the Instituto Biologia, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).

Like gut contents, soils contain a mix of species hard to identify using traditional science tools.

"Tiny soil organisms eat each other, roots, and all sorts of plant and animal debris," says Dr. Miller. "Knowing what eats what is important to many studies, including investigations into how much carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are being released from soils into the atmosphere."

Barcode experts continue to exercise previously demonstrated powers of their relatively young science in myriad ways – amassing information relevant to better agriculture, human health and environmental well-being while uncovering, for example, new instances of consumer fraud and helping to prosecute smugglers of wild bushmeat and other products made from endangered species.

The technology identifies and distinguishes known and unknown species quickly, cheaply, easily and accurately based on a snippet of genetic code.