BAR-CODING PLANTS

 The Plant Working Group of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) recently reached a consensus on the portions of the genes that would be used as the plant DNA bar-code. This came after four years of work by 52 scientists from 10 countries. It may soon be possible to classify a majority of the more than 400,000 species of land plants in the world on the basis of genetic variability.

 The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) is an international initiative devoted to developing DNA barcoding as a global standard for the identification of biological species.

 DNA bar-coding, a technique proposed by the University of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, uses a short genetic sequence from a standard part of the genome to quickly identify different plant species. To become usable the chosen genetic sequences of the bar-code must vary with species but must also be conserved enough in plants for identifying most of them. Bar-coding has been used since 2003 to identify animal species, and a bar-code library of nearly 60,000 animal species has been created.