DNA "barcode" aimed at bio-discovery - is expected to discover 2 million new species and significantly reduce costs

In Borneo, Marta Paterno, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Verona in Italy, is preparing samples for portable DNA sequencers. Image source: PIERRE ESCOUBAS

WASHINGTON since centuries, biologists have been painstakingly slow pace of identifying new species, describe the physiological characteristics of the sample, and often try to publish before naming species and their integration into the tree of life. Now, they have begun to try to identify a specimen as a new species in a matter of hours, and will soon achieve this at a very low cost. This is a revolution driven by short-chain DNA (DNA), a DNA called "barcode" that aims to pay tribute to familiar product identifiers. Combined with fast, inexpensive DNA sequencers, these "barcodes" differ enough to provide markers for identifying species.

“Biodiversity science is entering a golden age,” said Paul Hebert of the University of Guelph in Canada. On June 16, a team he led will launch a $180 million global initiative to identify more than 2 million new multicellular organisms. Other research groups have also used this method to sort out samples of new species in the laboratory, even directly in the wild. At present, the disappearance of species in the world is faster than the speed of discovery, so biologists welcome this technology.

“Over the years, I have been dreaming of changing these rules to bring a portable genomics lab to where the samples are,” said Massimo Delledonne, a geneticist at the University of Verona in Italy. He recently discovered a new species of snail in the forests of Borneo Island using bar code technology. “The field barcode technology is now ready for prime time.”

Biodiversity experts estimate that there are between 8.7 and 20 million plant, animal and fungi on Earth, but so far only 1.8 million have been formally described. And insects are an undiscovered area of ​​species. Rudolf Meier, a biologist at the National University of Singapore who has been developing barcode technology with a small DNA sequencer, said: "Overall, their biomass in terrestrial habitats may exceed the sum of all wild vertebrates."

In 2003, Hebert proposed the concept of a DNA barcode—a sequence of less than 1000 mitochondrial DNA bases can be sequenced to distinguish biological species. After a while, the idea became popular, but at this time Hebert and other enthusiasts began to compile barcodes from known species. For example, in 2010, he led a team called International Life Barcode (iBOL). The $80 million project is centered on Guelph and aims to create a reference library of known species and their recognition sequences. It now has more than 7.3 million barcodes (more than one for each species) and has proven to be a resource that can be used not only to identify known organisms, but also to record their interactions with other species. Role, including determining who ate who is eating based on different barcodes in a particular sample.

Now, with the support of funds and in-kind services from 30 international partners, iBOL is about to begin a seven-year follow-up. The project, called BIOSCAN, will collect samples and study species interactions at 2,500 locations around the world, with the goal of expanding its reference library to 15 million bar code records, 90% of which are from undescribed species.

Hebert said the data will lay the groundwork for monitoring pollution, land-use change and the impact of global warming on biodiversity. In the end, "we will be able to track life on Earth like tracking the weather."

In addition, Hebert said that unlike iBOL's previous focus on extracting barcodes for known species, "one of the main goals of this time will be to discover new species." If the software is unable to match the barcode sequence of a sample to an existing species, it will immediately mark the sample for closer genetic and visual inspection and possibly identify it as a new species.

In the past, scientists may have to spend years or even decades to confirm that certain organisms are new species. For example, certain fly species differ only in the shape of the male genitalia.

Hebert predicts that custom biometrics and sequencers can read enough bases at once to get a complete barcode, which keeps costs low – including collection, storage, DNA extraction, sequencing and subsequent analysis. Within each sample is approximately $1. He expects that the total cost of the sequencing part will eventually drop to about $0.02 per sample . (Zhao Xixi)

Source: Chinese Journal of Science

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