Message from CBOL's Chairman

Dear CBOL Member Organizations,

CBOL had an exceptional year of activities in 2008, culminating in the Second International Barcode of Life Conference in Taipei in September.  We have grown to include more than 160 Member Organizations from 50 countries.  The Executive Committee met immediately after the conference to plan our next two years of activity and we agreed that CBOL needs to strengthen its interactions with our Member Organizations.  We plan to send you newsletters on a quarterly basis and we will be exploring the possibility of holding web-based e-conferences and consultative meetings in the future.  The Executive Committee agreed that given the extraordinary pace at which barcoding is developing, we need to find ways for its Member Organizations to receive information, provide feedback, and to interact with each other.  We welcome any suggestions you have for improving this two-way communication.

As you know, CBOL’s activities and the work of our Secretariat Office are supported through a two-year grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  The current grant expires at the end of June 2008 and we submitted our proposal for renewed funding in January.  We anticipate a decision by the Sloan Foundation Board by 1 April and we will post a copy of the proposal on the CBOL website at that time.  I’m pleased to report that during the past two years:

• CBOL held a total of 28 conferences, workshops and outreach meetings, including workshops organized in collaboration with the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), the Assembling the Tree of Life (AToL) initiative of the National Science Foundation, and leading researchers in population and evolutionary biology.
• CBOL attracted significant outside funding.  The barcoding projects launched by CBOL received more than US$1.5 million.  Over 60% of the budgets for our seven largest meetings were raised from sources other than the Sloan Foundation. 
• CBOL has increased the participation of developing countries in barcoding.  We held outreach meetings in southern and eastern Africa, South/Central America, and Asia, and since 2006 we have doubled the number of CBOL Member Organizations in developing countries.
• Members of CBOL’s Executive Committee and Scientific Advisory Board made a total of 50 outreach presentations in addition to the 28 meetings organized by CBOL.

The program of work we have proposed to the Sloan Foundation is even more ambitious.  During the coming two years, CBOL hopes to catalyze growth of the barcode reference library to 1 million records from 100,000 species, and to continue its efforts to promote participation of developing countries.  The next quarterly newsletter will include news about the Sloan Foundation proposal and our program of work for 2008-2010.

Thank you all for your interest in barcoding and your participation in CBOL.  Please let us know how we can help you contribute to the Barcode of Life Initiative in the future.

Sincerely yours,

Scott E. Miller, Chair of CBOL’s Executive Committee

Smithsonian Institution

Message from Executive Secretary

Greetings and Happy New Year to you all!  I’d like to bring you up to date on three important developments in CBOL’s organization.  First, the Executive Committee recently approved several important changes in CBOL’s Terms of Reference, and these are explained on a separate newsletter article.  The most significant change is that the Scientific Advisory Board has been replaced by an Implementation Board.

Second, I want to report that the terms of three members of the Executive Committee are coming to an end.  I know you all join me in thanking the following people for their outstanding contributions to CBOL’s Executive Committee:

CBOL will be selecting three new Executive Committee members to replace Jim, Richard, and José.  We urge Member Organizations to consider nominating suitable candidates for these positions.  Please refer to CBOL’s call for nominations by Member Organizations to replace them. 

Finally, I’m pleased to note the arrival of several new members of CBOL’s Secretariat Office.  CBOL has been fortunate in attracting outstanding staff members and I know you join me in welcoming them aboard. 

Best regards,

David E. Schindel, Executive Secretary

CBOL, Smithsonian Institution

News from CBOL's Secretariat Office

	David Schindel, Executive Secretary Dr. Schindel was trained as an invertebrate paleontologist and holds a B.S. in Geology from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from Harvard. He worked for the US National Science Foundation for 21 years, during which he was the NSF representative to Europe from 1998 to 2004.  He is responsible for strategy development and implementation in all areas of CBOL activity, and he leads CBOL’s fundraising and outreach activities.
	Meg Fritzsche, Administrator Meg Fritzsche is in charge of CBOL’s financial management and daily operations in the Secretariat Office. She has lead responsibility for the logistics of all CBOL meetings, including the International Conference, executes purchase orders, writes contract agreements, and oversees grant administration.  Prior to joining CBOL in 2005, Meg earned a BA degree in art history, taught English in Japan, and worked in the Smithsonian Institution’s Office of Sponsored Projects.
	Agnes Balla, Program Specialist Agnes manages all of CBOL's websites, case study submissions, and keeps track of all of our member organizations and publications. She assembles our outreach documents like this newsletter and helps in planning and conducting all CBOL meetings, including the international conference.  In the last few months, Agnes has also been preparing data and specimens for the Tephritid Barcoding Initiative.  Agnes received a BS in biology from St. Mary’s College of Maryland in 2006, after which she joined CBOL as an intern and then a regular staff member. Please contact Agnes at ballaa@si.edu if you have suggestions for improving the CBOL newsletter.
	Mike Trizna, Data Management Support Specialist Mike recently completed his Masters in bioinformatics from Virginia Commonwealth University. He has been working full-time as data management specialist after interning with CBOL last summer. His main task will be to develop the BOLI Data Portal, in collaboration work with CBOL’s Data Analysis Working Group, Database Working Group, and Leading Labs Network. Mike will be the main point of contact for barcoding labs that need help with data management problems such as uploading their barcode data to BOLD and GenBank.
	Kristin Jett, Program Assistant Kristin has a BS in paleontology from UCLA and is joining CBOL’s Secretariat Office this month.  She will be the main contact person for the Biorepositories Registry site that CBOL has created in partnership with GenBank and GBIF. Kristin will be working closely with Meg and Agnes in providing critical support for all the logistics associated with CBOL meetings.  Kristin will also be using her design talents to create the BOLI Data Portal with Mike, and to design and produce future CBOL outreach documents and user resources for the Leading Labs Network.

Call for Nominations to Executive Committee

CBOL's Terms of Reference specifies that an Executive Committee will consist of the Principal Investigator on the grant that supports CBOL, CBOL's Executive Secretary, and five members selected from nominations made by the Member Organizations.

As of January 2008, there are three unfilled seats on the Executive Committee.  The current members of the Executive Committee are:

Member Organizations are therefore invited to submit their nominations to the Executive Secretary at SchindelD@si.edu.  We seek senior researchers and institution officials with experience and standing in biodiversity activities, and who will be effective and energetic in providing CBOL with strategic advice and direction. 

 As specified in the Terms of Reference, the procedure for filling these three vacancies is:

CBOL's New Terms of Reference

CBOL’s Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) and Executive Committee met following the Taipei international conference in September.  One important outcome of these meetings was a revision of CBOL’s organizational structure and Terms of Reference.  Since its creation in 2005, the SAB had expanded to 14 members that included the chairs of all major CBOL projects and Working Groups, as well as regional representatives.  The SAB reported to the Executive Committee that its remit had grown too broad and its membership too large to be effective.  Upon advice from the SAB, the Executive Committee disestablished the SAB and replaced it with an Implementation Board consisting of the leaders of CBOL’s major activities and representatives of important outside initiatives.  This decision was accompanied by a decision by the Executive Committee to strengthen its communication with Member Organization and to ensure regional representation on the Executive Committee.
The new organizational structure of CBOL is shown below:

Upcoming Events

1. Brazil:  Eduardo Eizirik of Pontificia Universidade Católica do RS (PUCRS), Brazil has organized a symposium on DNA barcoding that will take place Brazil Society of Zoologists, 21 February 2008 
2. Rome, Italy :  CBOL is co-organizing a side-event that will take place on Wednesday, 20 February 2008, at the 13th meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity.  The event will be a roundtable discussion entitled “Biodiversity Research, Taxonomy and Sharing Benefits” and has been planned by the Global Taxonomy Initiative’s Coordination Mechanism
3. Barcelona, Spain: Carlos Ribera of the University of Barcelona has organized a Barcoding session that will be held during the Euroscience Open Forum in Barcelona, 18-22 July 2008.

SBSTTA Side-Event, Wednesday, 20th February 2008, lunch break

Biodiversity Research, Taxonomy, and Sharing Benefits 

Organized by the GTI Coordination Mechanism, German GTI NFP, CBOL, and BioNET International

This side-event will offer a roundtable and plenary discussion of experiences and visions of Biodiversity Research and its Shared Benefits. Representatives of ca 6 different organizations will be invited to give brief statements on their experiences and visions of sharing benefits derived from basic biodiversity research, especially for biodiversity-rich countries. After a total (max!) of 30 minutes of presentations, the panel members would ask each other questions, also challenging individual view points expressed. Then the audience would be invited to join the discussion and ask questions to the panel.

Participants to the roundtable in their brief statements will address what specific benefits have been or should be shared as derived from basic (i.e., non-commercial) biodiversity research, specifically in the field of taxonomy, to countries of origin. Contributions may include unconventional or controversial suggestions, in order to provide grounds for an open and stimulating discussion. The goal of the event will be to generate new thoughts and approaches for generating and sharing concrete benefits from basic biodiversity research, beyond the ongoing negotiations for a possible regulatory CBD framework for Access and Benefit Sharing.

Recent Events and Reports

CBOL held five days of meetings at Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan in September 2007.  The post-conference website has all the conference documents, pictures of the event, and links to the presentations made during the conference.

EDIT, the European Distributed Institute of Taxonomy, held a three-day conference on the ECBOL, the European Consortium for the Barcode of Life in October 2007.  The goal of the meeting was to organize European barcoding activities and to discuss Europe’s infrastructure needs for barcoding.

Participants in CBOL activities met with leading researchers in population and evolutionary biology for a three-day conference at the Banbury Conference Center at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York.  The meeting report describes areas of potential research collaboration.

Reports of other past CBOL meetings are available on the CBOL website.  

Recent grants to CBOL-related projects:

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation of New York has recently made three grants for new barcoding initiatives:

• The American Museum of Natural History in New York has received $411,000 for a DNA Barcoding Initiative for Conservation (Principal Investigator George Amato)
• The New York Botanical Garden has received $572,000 for TreeBOL, an initiative to barcode 100,000 species of trees (PI Ken Cameron)
• The University of Guelph has received $997,000 for MarBOL, an initiative to obtain barcodes for 50,000 species of marine organisms.  The samples would come from three museums (Australia Museum, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle in Paris, and the Florida Museum of Natural History) and from projects of the Census of Marine Life (PI Dirk Steinke)

The Richard Lounsbery Foundation of Washington, DC has awarded $200,000 to the American Museum of Natural History for the DNA Barcoding Initiative for Conservation

CBOL's Role in Barcoding Science

Plant Barcoding.  One of the side-meetings held at the Second International Barcode of Life Conference in Taipei was devoted to plant barcoding.  The search for a suitable barcoding region for vascular plants goes all the way back to CBOL's inaugural meeting at the Smithsonian in May 2004, and based on the discussions in Taipei we may be close to a solution.  Several research teams presented their findings and recommendations, and two pages in Science magazine were devoted to that meeting.  Several publications have appeared in the past months in which plant barcode regions are proposed and CBOL's Plant Working Group  (chaired by Peter Hollingsworth, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh) is bringing these researchers together to combine their data for a comprehensive analysis.  You can find these and other barcoding publications under Publications on the CBOL website.

Case Study Portal

CBOL has created an online Case Study Portal as a system for posting barcoding projects that people have planned or are conducting.  It’s a way of finding partners for your project or finding a project that you can join.