Thursday, July 11, 2013

Barcode Index Number (BIN) System in DNA barcoding explained

Journal pone 0066213 g001Quick note to highlight the following publication:
Ratnasingham, S., & Hebert, P. D. N. (2013). A DNA-Based Registry for All Animal Species: The Barcode Index Number (BIN) System. (D. Fontaneto, Ed.)PLoS ONE, 8(7), e66213. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066213
This paper outlines the methods used by the BOLD project to cluster sequences into "BINS", and touches on the issue of dark taxa (taxa that are in GenBank but which lack formal scientific names). Might be time to revisit the dark taxa idea, especially now that I've got a better handle on the taxonomic literature (see BioNames) where the names of at least some dark taxa may lurk.