Welcome to Plant Pathogen Barcode (PPB)
To facilitate the rapid and accurate identification of plant pathogens, a
new database is being developed to firmly link names and associated meta-data to
a rapidly developing new standard in biology: the identification of species via
DNA sequence signatures, a process known as “DNA barcoding.”
Although DNA sequence-based species identification has been utilized previously
in connection with phylogenetic studies such as Assembling the Tree of Life
(ATOL), the development that has made DNA barcoding (of just one or two
standardized gene loci per organism) an emerging gold-standard for species
recognition has been very recent, with the first publication in 2003 (Hebert
et al. 2003), the setting up of the master international Consortium for the
Barcoding of Life (CBoL) courtesy of a USD 2 million grant from the Sloan
Foundation in 2004, and the first European-based conference at London’s Natural
History Museum in March, 2005. This development has already shown itself to
have unprecedented power for clarifying species identities and limits,
uncovering new and often cryptic species, and allowing species identification of
difficult specimens such as larvae, seeds, tissue fragments, sterile mycelia and
fossils. At the same time, however, it has also cast doubt on the identity of
all morphologically identified materials, including the collected biological
type, authentic and voucher specimens that anchor the meaningful usage of all
biological names and thus all biological information. Furthermore, barcoding
often reveals cryptic species that even specialist morphotaxonomists cannot
reliably identify. Thus it has become clear to all significant
collections worldwide that the building-in of a database of DNA barcodes
corresponding to unique and high-priority collected specimens is imperative.
In response to the growing number of researchers who are using barcoding, data
standards for barcode records have been developed, and an open access database
has been created. The Consortium for the
Barcode of Life (CBOL) has engaged more than 125 Member Organizations in 40
countries in BOLI.