Only now, this spring I have got introduced to DNA barcoding. This is method to identify the species of plants, animals and fungus - a practical method for distinguishing species using a short DNA sequence from a standardized location on the genome.
For a centuries identification of organisms had been carried out by morphologycal characters, but the determination of many species is not easy, for example, in entomology identification of pests deeper than genus using only morphologycal characters without molecular biology is very complicated. For DNA barcoding you do not need a high quality materials, you can do it also from old or damaged specimen. This method was proposed in 2003 by Paul D.N. Hebert and nowadays this method is not expensive, it is fast and reliable.
My attention paid article about effectiveness of barcoding in practice and in theory: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0100755
How to understand the limits to DNA barcoding and the evolutionary mechanisms? Is DNA barcoding so reliable that society already can refuse from old school methods to determine organisms: bothanics, morphology, taxonomic classification etc.? Or maybe… DNA barcoding as a method has also obvious disadvantages and we still need an experts of old school methods?
