A non-profit marine science center in Ventura County is allowing teenage students to take part in a global genetic mapping project, helping to create a landmark new data base for research, as well as practical applications. KCLU's Lance Orozco has the story, from Ventura Harbor.

Watch the NBC interview with DNAHouse researcher Matt Cost and advisor Jesse Ausubel here on YouTube.

Two students collected 217 samples they encountered daily and found mislabeled food and at least one surprise: hot dogs actually made of beef.

Read the full story here.

Geneticists are using the building blocks of life to combat a horrific illegal trade. For more information on this article, please click here.

A small group of insect researchers have invented a device to identify every creature on Earth. So why do other biologists hate the idea?

Only a tiny fraction of bees produce honey. Researcher Laurence Packer’s mission is to learn everything he can about the vast majority that don’t.  For more information on this article, please click here.

Cataloging Life

In 2003, scientists proposed a universal animal barcode: a segment of roughly 650 base pairs of a mitochondrial gene. Today, BOB GRANT reports there are more than 300,000 barcode sequences in a central repository. Can this short stretch of DNA conserve biodiversity and keep us safe from poisons?

Podcast can also be found here.

http://magazine.audubon.org/fieldnotes/fieldnotes0711.html

http://allafrica.com/stories/200709210953.html

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/008200709180365.htm

http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g7iBJqJkZERj5Vy2bg3oIwkZmmLQ

University of Guelph scientists develop identifiers to begin catalogue of all species.
http://www.thestar.com/article/256975

WRESTLING WITH BIODIVERSITY

THE INVENTOR OF DNA BARCODING, PAUL HEBERT, LEADS THE CHARGE FOR AN INTERNATIONAL EFFORT TO UNDERSTAND THE EARTH’S BIODIVERSITY.

http://www.innovationcanada.ca/30/en/articles/biodiversity.html

Imagine being able to walk up to any plant anywhere - be it a seedling or a 40m tree - a know its scientific name within a few seconds.  Such ability would be to botany what the World Wide Web is to humankind.

Earth & Sky’s Jorge Salazar spoke with Dr. Stoeckle about DNA barcoding and why scientists are doing it.  To listen to the Podcast please follow link below:

http://www.earthsky.org/clear-voices/51118/expert-dna-barcoding-project-just-begun

 http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/feat/archives/2007/04/22/2003357801

Excerpt of story by Siobhan Roberts

Life is short in Churchill, Man., where ice lingers on Hudson Bay until July and by September, it's snowing again. Even with these limitations, the tundra teems with activity and beckons biodiversity hunter Paul Hebert like a pet store to a wide-eyed child. Over three weeks last summer, he conducted a "biodiversity blitz" in Churchill -- a census of all the organisms he could get his hands on.

Hebert, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Guelph, along with about 30 staff and students grabbed samples from the flotsam parts they found lying about: feathers from the ptarmigan and hawk-eyed snowy owl, tufts of hair from the woodland caribou, skin swabs from the beluga whale, along with specimens of caplin, fairy shrimp and tiny jet-black water fleas. "Our prize catch occurred just two days ago," Hebert reported in an e-mail from the field. "We found a specimen of the black witch moth on a rock bluff right beside Hudson Bay. This is a migratory species that breeds in Mexico. It now stands as the most northern record ever for this species; it beats a 1957 record from Juneau, Alaska!"

Back in the lab, the team is reading a snippet of DNA from the tens of thousands of invertebrate specimens and the hundred or so vertebrate samples it collected. "We are not out slaughtering organisms," explains Hebert. The Churchill expedition deployed what some consider a revolutionary new taxonomical tool: a standardized method for identifying species using a short DNA sequence from a common locality on the genome. Hebert debuted this technique in a 2003 article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, where he proclaimed that "these sequences can be viewed as genetic 'barcodes' that are embedded in every cell."

http://www.canadiangeographic.ca/magazine/ma07/feature_barcode.asp

http://www.topcropmanager.com/6_search/article.asp?article=2380

Prof. Paul Hebert is featured in a one-page science article in the January 15th issue of Maclean’s magazine.

http://www.gisp.org/publications/newsletter/GISPnewsletter7.pdf

"One day, when lost in the supermarket, evolutionary biologist Paul Hebert marveled at how every item could be identified using a unique bar code. Then it hit him: why couldn't DNA be scanned the same way? " - The Best and Brightest 2006, Esquire Magazine.

http://www.islaearth.org/radio/show.php?_sid=1164700800

BOLD (Barcode of Life Data Systems) was featured on the show "Quirks & Quarks" on CBC Radio.  The segment was called "Backing up the Planet" and featured Sujeevan Ratnasingham from the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding.

http://www.cbc.ca/quirks/archives/06-07/nov25.html

New research by a Canadian biologis is changing the way scientists identify species, writes Stephen Strauss.

DNA barcoding is set to uproot the ‘tree of life’ and revolutionise the way we classify animals. It may also have massive benefi ts for wildlife conservation.

In a world of declining biodiversity, botanical gardens are coming into their own -- both as storehouses of rare plants and skills, and increasingly as centres of molecular research.

Extrait :
Depuis une quinzaine d’années, la biodiversité est devenue un concept et un enjeu majeurs. Mais alors qu’on dénonçait son érosion, principalement due aux activités humaines, on se rendait compte de la pauvreté de sa description. Si trois siècles de travail de naturalistes ont réussi à décrire 1,7 million d’espèces animales et végétales, l’ensemble de la biodiversité est globalement estimé à 10 millions d’espèces ou plus (hors bactéries et virus). Bref, on ne connaît pas l’ensemble du vivant qui est en train de s’appauvrir sous nos yeux. Il faut donc aller vite ! Cependant, le travail d’un taxonomiste est long et fastidieux : récolte sur le terrain, description des organismes, comparaison avec les espèces proches, dénomination, classification. Certains écosystèmes, tels les récifs coralliens ou la canopée des forêts tropicales et équatoriales, sont d’une telle richesse qu’ils nécessiteraient des siècles de travail naturaliste.

Das internationale Consortium for the Barcode of Life will ein standardisiertes DNA-Fragment aller Organismenarten der Welt sequenzieren. Dieser Barcode soll dazu dienen, Arten schnell und eindeutig zu bestimmen. Ziel ist neben der Katalogisierung des Lebens auf unserem Planeten auch die Entwicklung eines handlichen Geräts, das in der Lage ist, kostengünstig kleine Proben eines Organismus einer Art zuzuordnen. Profitieren können von diesem Ansatz nicht nur die Grundlagenforschung, sondern auch gesellschaftliche und politische Institutionen. Zudem stellt DNA-Barcoding einen sehr wichtigen Beitrag zur Beschreibung der Artenvielfalt dar, da es diesen Prozess stark beschleunigen kann.

Genetic barcoding is a new technology using a short DNA sequence from a gene found in all animals which can identify a species.

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2005/1366924.htm

Biologists hope that a simple tag on all forms of life, and even a hand-held reader, will make classification a 21st century science.

Biologists hope that a simple tag on all forms of life, and even a hand-held reader, will make classification a 21st century science.

It looks like a case of "I think I can, I think I can, I did" for University of Guelph zoologist Paul Hebert.Last year, we learned of his hope of using bits of DNA to refine how scientists determined what a species is. The technique looks at the DNA in a gene common to all living creatures. Prof. Hebert argued that the pattern variations he saw matched up well with species divisions biologists had arrived at before DNA data were available.

A few enterprising researchers are using the tactics of big science to come up with ways to simplify and speed up the assessment of biodiversity. Others have pushed their colleagues into new ways of thinking about creating phylogenies, as they build ever-larger trees on their way to the one grand tree of life--a goal once considered unreachable.