An in silico approach for the evaluation of DNA barcodes.

ABSTRACT:

Background

DNA barcoding is a key tool for assessing biodiversity in both taxonomic and environmental studies. Essential features of barcodes include their applicability to a wide spectrum of taxa and their ability to identify even closely related species. Several DNA regions have been proposed as barcodes and the region selected strongly influences the output of a study. However, formal comparisons between barcodes remained limited until now. Here we present a standard method for evaluating barcode quality, based on the use of a new bioinformatic tool that performs in silico PCR over large databases. We illustrate this approach by comparing the taxonomic coverage and the resolution of several DNA regions already proposed for the barcoding of vertebrates. To assess the relationship

SUBMITTER: Ficetola GF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3091633 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature