Sunday, February 18, 2007

DNA Barcoding

DNA Barcoding is a kind of science slang for using PCR to amplify the equivalent stretch of DNA in a bunch of organisms and then using it to compare their relatedness. Usually the DNA that is selected for amplification is chosen because it is both informative and easy to amplify… with the same primers used in all the amplifications.

The approach has proven quite useful when analysing ”cryptic species” or species that otherwise require expert identification. The Mytilus sp. complex we look at falls into that category - very few people can tell the adult forms apart except by DNA analysis. I used AUDACITY (the software Robertta and Kalpesh demo’ed) to extract a nice mp3 from this Heredity podcast which I have provided here:

Heredity Podcast on DNA Barcoding (Abridged) - August 2006

Heredity Journal article to accompany podcast (PDF)

Heredity Journal website