Genetic "Barcodes" May Cut Illegal Trade - Experts
Date: 17-Sep-07
Country: NORWAY
Author: Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent
Experts have identified DNA "barcodes" -- named after the
black and white lines that identify products in a supermarket --
of more than 31,000 species of animals and plants against 12,700
species in 2005 in a fast-growing branch of science.
"We're building up a reference library of species," said
David Schindel of the US Smithsonian Institution who is
executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life.
About 350 barcode experts will meet from Sept. 18-20 in Taipei.
A snippet of genetic material, such as a sliver of fish or
sawdust from a plank of wood, can help identity a species by a
DNA "barcode" unique to each species in a laboratory process
taking a few hours and costing about US$2.
Barcoding experts are working with regulators such as the
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek applications for
the database such as curbing illegal imports, fighting
mosquitoes or helping understand bird migration routes.
Barcoding could help, for instance, identify a tiny worm on
a shipment of bananas and so settle a dispute about whether it
was a harmless pest just picked up at the port of entry or a
more dangerous imported species.
The FDA warned in May that a shipment labelled monkfish from
China might contain a type of puffer fish that can contain a
deadly toxin if badly prepared. "Barcoding could help identify
the fish quickly," Schindel said.
TIMBER
The same could apply to checking whether a wooden table, for
instance, was from an endangered hardwood species.
"Once a tree has been cut up into boards it's very hard to
identify .... without the branches, roots and bark it's very
hard to identify," Schindel told Reuters. "Barcoding can help."
"This has not gone to a court of law yet but in the next
year or two I think we will see more and more cases where
barcoding has provided the smoking pistol," he said.
Proper identification of mosquitoes could help slow the
spread of malaria, which kills a million people a year, by
enabling scientists to pick the right insecticides.
"Key to disease management is vector control," said
Yvonne-Marie Linton of the Natural History Museum, London. She
said in a statement that misidentification of species often
hampered controls.
And proper identification of dead birds after collisions
with aircraft could help avoid future strikes.
"Knowing which birds are most often struck and the timing,
altitude and routes of their migrations, could avert some of the
thousands of annual collisions," said Carla Dove of the
Smithsonian.
The scientists hope to identify 500,000 species in coming
years.
So far the databases are far from complete -- with about 20
percent of the world's 10,000 species of birds and 10 percent of
the estimated 35,000 marine and freshwater fishes. Extracting
DNA barcodes from plants is proving harder than for animals.
