Today I will be discussing a paper that I found on DNA
barcoding. For those that do not know, DNA barcoding is a way to identify a
species using a genetic marker in the organisms DNA. The author of this project
discusses how this “project was initially was conceived as a standard system
for fast and accurate identification of animal species” but now is used to “assign”
and “enhance the discovery of new species”(Frézal
and Leblois).
This paper discusses that it uses a region of “648 base pair (bp) of the
cytochrome c oxidase gene”(Frézal
and Leblois). This region is used to identify all
eukaryotic species. The author then states that they are also working on a way
to use this system for identifying microscopic eukaryotic life. For this they
are looking at a 600 bp region of a ribosomal subunit (Frézal
and Leblois).
This paper did a good job explaining the idea of DNA barcoding for eukaryotes,
but can this idea be used to classify prokaryotes (using RNA instead of DNA)?
Here is the link to the paper as well as the citation.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1567134808001238
Frézal, Lise, and Raphael Leblois. “Four Years of DNA
Barcoding: Current Advances and Prospects.” Infection, Genetics and
Evolution 8.5 (2008): 727–736. ScienceDirect. Web. 11 Sept. 2015.
I like this article, very cool that they are able to identify eukaryotic organisms by this "fingerprint". I could see it being possible to identify prokaryotes with the same process by using RNA, except this causes a rise in another question: Since it is RNA in prokaryotes, what gene could they examine instead of the cytochrome c oxidase found in eukaryotes?
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