[Taxacom] Guidelines for DNA sequence quality control in systematics

[Henrik Nilsson]

Colleagues,

We recently published a set of guidelines for DNA sequence quality management in systematics and taxonomy:

Nilsson et al. 2012. Five simple guidelines for establishing basic authenticity and reliability of newly generated fungal ITS sequences. MycoKeys 4: 37–63.

URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/mycokeys.4.3606
Press release: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-09/pp-dsn090512.php

The guidelines centre on fungi and the ITS region, but in reality they are pretty independent of gene choice and organism group. The guidelines are non-technical and do not require substantial bioinformatics skills or significant computational power.

Maybe they’ll prove helpful to your students.

Best wishes,

Henrik Nilsson