Consortium for the Barcode of Life

Consortium for the Barcode of Life is an international collaborative effort which aims to develop a mechanism capable of generating a unique genetic barcode for every species of life on earth.

The science behind the Consortium's initiative has met with considerable controversy, with responses ranging from enthusiastic endorsement to strident rejection. More work needs to be done to determine to what extent barcoding can complement existing taxonomic methods in cataloguing the planet's biodiversity.

Telephone directory of earth's species
On September 14, 2007, a team of scientists (50 countries) initiated a global database project for Earth's 1.8 million known species (from tiny genetic material). David Schindel, a Smithsonian Institution paleontologist, executive secretary of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life stated that it will create a global reference library: "a kind of telephone directory for all species." 30,000 species had been put in the database to reach 500,000, 5 years. The consortium is sponsored by the Smithsonian Institution's Museum of Natural History. The 2003 research paper of geneticist Paul Hebert of University of Guelph, Ontario proposed a database of DNA barcodes identifying all species.