[Taxacom] barcode of life wins Ebbe Nielsen Prize

[Donat Agosti]

In today's GBIF news letter I discovered the announcement of the Ebbe
Nielsen Prize winner, Mr. Ratnasingham, credited with the development of the
Barcode of Life Data (BOLD) systems.  <http://tinyurl.com/248w6qu>
http://tinyurl.com/248w6qu

 

This in itself is fine, but what I find appalling is the statement of the
Krishtalka, the chair of the GBIF Science Committee, that states "The impact
and strategic significance of BOLD, according to Krishtalka, promises to
rival that of Genbank. "BOLD enables a growing number of scientists to both
register and access critical genomic data in a common way for complex
research and research applications for science and society, both inside and
outside the domains of biodiversity science.""

 

How comes that BOLD (Advancing species indentification and discovery through
the analysis of short, standardized gene regions" wants to compete with
GenBank? How does a short sequence compare with a whole genome? Though
barcodes make some very important contributions to biology, they can not and
will never replace the many gene sequences needed for phylogenetic analysis,
the increasing impact of entire genomes, nor all the other information
needed to define species, such as the rapidly increasing number of digital
online images of taxa in a very simple way.

 

May be I misunderstand this statement, but the very way it is written in the
press release, this shows a very questionable attitude of GBIF's Science
Committee chair, which has little to do with science but rather imperium
building of missing far sight.

 

Donat Agosti