Plant Working Group

Reflecting the urgent need to reach a consensus on the standard barcoding regions for plants, the Plant Working Group web-text focuses on this issue in the first instance. Additional details about plant barcoding and plant barcoding projects will be added shortly.

Choosing a standard barcode for land plants

Summary

There has been considerable debate regarding the most suitable barcoding region(s) for land plants. Different proposals have been put forward by different research groups (see Pennisi (2007) Science 318: 190-191; Ledford (2008) Nature 451: 616). Reflecting the need to resolve this issue and reach agreement, the data matrices from the different groups have been supplemented and compiled for joint analyses. A consensus barcode solution will be proposed in light of these joint analyses. Progress update 7th October

Papers proposing or discussing Plant barcoding regions

  • Chase MW, Cowan RS, Hollingsworth PM, et al. (2007) A proposal for a standardised protocol to barcode all land plants. Taxon 56, 295-299.
  • Chase MW, Salamin N, Wilkinson M, et al. (2005) Land plants and DNA barcodes: short-term and long-term goals. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 360, 1889-1895.
  • Cowan RS, Chase MW, Kress WJ, Savolainen V (2006) 300,000 species to identify: problems, progress, and prospects in DNA barcoding of land plants. Taxon 55, 611-616.
  • Fazekas AJ, Burgess KS, Kesanakurti PR, Graham SW, Newmaster SG, Husband BC, Percy DM, Hajibabaei M, Barrett SCH(2008) Multiple multilocus DNA barcodes from the plastid genome discriminate plant species equally well. PLoS ONE 3, e2802.
    http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0002802
  • Hollingsworth PM. (2008) DNA barcoding plants in biodiversity hot spots: progress and outstanding questions. Heredity. 101, 1–2; doi:10.1038/hdy.2008.16
    http://www.nature.com/hdy/journal/v101/n1/full/hdy200816a.html
  • Hollingsworth ML, Clark A, Forrest LL, Richardson JE, Pennington RT, Long D, Cowan R, Chase MW, Gaudeul M, Hollingsworth PM (in press) Selecting barcoding loci for plants: evaluation of seven candidate loci with species level sampling in three divergent groups of land plants Molecular Ecology Resources.
  • Kress WJ and Erickson DL (2008) DNA barcodes: Genes, genomics, and bioinformatics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 105, 2761-2762
  • Kress WJ, Erickson DL (2007) A two-locus global DNA barcode for land plants: the coding rbcL gene complements the non-coding trnH-psbA spacer region. PLoS ONE 2, e508.
  • Kress WJ, Wurdack KJ, Zimmer EA, Weigt LA, Janzen DH (2005) Use of DNA barcodes to identify flowering plants. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 102, 8369-8374.
  • Lahaye R, van der Bank M, Bogarin D, et al. (2008) DNA barcoding the floras of biodiversity hotspots. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/0709936105v1
  • Lahaye R, Savolainen V, Duthoit S, Maurin O, van der Bank M (2008) A test of psbK-psbI and atpF-atpH as potential plant DNA barcodes using the flora of the Kruger National Park (South Africa) as a model system. Available from Nature Precedings http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2008.1896.1
  • Ledford H (2008) Botanical identities: DNA barcoding for plants comes a step closer. Nature 451, 616 (doi:10.1038/451616b) http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080206/full/451616b.html
  • Newmaster SG, Fazekas AJ, Ragupathy S (2006) DNA barcoding in land plants: evaluation of rbcL in a multigene tiered approach. Canadian Journal of Botany-Revue Canadienne De Botanique 84, 335-341.
  • Newmaster SG, Fazekas AJ, Steeves RAD, Janovec J (2008) Testing candidate plant barcode regions in the Myristicaceae. Molecular Ecology Resources 8, 480-490.
  • Pennisi E (2007) Taxonomy. Wanted: a barcode for plants. Science 318, 190-191.
  • Sass C, Little DP, Stevenson DW, Specht CD (2007) DNA barcoding in the cycadales: testing the potential of proposed barcoding markers for species identification of cycads. PLoS ONE 2, e1154.
  • Taberlet P, Coissac E, Pompanon F, et al. (2007) Power and limitations of the chloroplast trnL (UAA) intron for plant DNA barcoding. Nucleic Acids Research 35: e14.

CONTACT: P.Hollingsworth@rbge.org.uk (chair of Plant Working Group of CBOL).

CBOL operates a Plant Working Group List Serve. To subscribe, please contact Kristin Jett.