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Scientists Creating Databank of World's Animals Using DNA Bar Codes

Posted on: Friday, 14 September 2007, 18:00 CDT

By ALISON AULD

UNDATED (CP) - Imagine the fish monger at the local market scanning your fillet of black grouper just to make sure the pricey delicacy isn't a lowly piece of farmed catfish.

Or having a customs official at the airport test the fur coat you bought in South America to see if it isn't really an endangered ocelot, while a port inspector checks the DNA of a mussel found on a container ship to determine if it is an invasive species.

They sound like futuristic dreams, but scientists say they're becoming increasingly realistic goals through an international project with Canadian roots that's creating a database of DNA bar codes for the world's flora and fauna.

"We're basically building a table of species-specific DNA sequences that can act as tags to be used in the identification of an unknown bio-material," Bob Hanner, a research scientist with the Consortium for the Barcode of Life, said Friday from Guelph, Ont.

"Going through the exercise of bar-coding the world's species is hugely, hugely important to consumers of biodiversity information."

Hanner, long with about 350 bar-coding experts from around the world, will attend the consortium's second international meeting in Taipei starting Tuesday to discuss this rapidly expanding field of science.

The consortium project involves identifying a particular DNA sequence in marine and animal life that is unique to the species. That allows scientists to accurately identify the species and create a so-called bar code of its DNA similar to the black and white stripes on store goods.

The group has so far bar-coded 300,000 specimens from more than 30,000 species since its first international meeting in 2005 when it had 30,000 specimens from 6,000 species.

Government agencies are also looking closely at the technology to see if it could be applied in food safety, conservation, disease control and consumer protection efforts.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has been developing bar codes for hazardous fish species to quickly identify harmful fish following several incidents of label fraud.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is also working on a global database of DNA bar-codes for fruit flies to deal with horticultural pests, and lumber products to identify endangered timber products.

"There have been cases in the United States where fish labelled as monkfish were actually pufferfish, which are very toxic," David Schindel, executive secretary of the consortium, said from Taipei, explaining that the pufferfish was detected by DNA bar codes.

"I can certainly see far enough into the future where I'm convinced that government agencies are going to need these devices for their daily operation."

The three-year-old scientific study gained ground in a lab at the University of Guelph, where zoologist Paul Hebert published a paper in 2003 proposing that specific DNA sequences could quickly identify particular species.

The theory, which attracted critics who questioned its accuracy, would dramatically speed up the process of species identification and give researchers a more precise inventory of the globe's animal and plant life.

"It's going to help us understand the basic natural history of a lot of species that are around us," said Hanner, adding that Canada is alone in having a national research network dedicated to developing a database for all the flora and fauna in the country.

The biggest challenge facing scientists involved in the project is enlisting international partners to add to the growing databank of bar-coded animals - a critical element if the database is to succeed.

Countries might be interested in participating, but might not have the resources to conduct the research, Hanner said.

"To achieve the full benefit of bar-coding, this really needs to be a global exercise," he said. "I need to have the Chinese bar-coding their pest insects, so when one of these larvae show up on a pallet on its way to Canada I can actually get an in identification."

Schindel said one of the aims of the meeting will be "to reach out and make it easier for people to attend and get involved."

Source: Canadian Press

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