DNA Barcode - Choice of Locus

Choice of Locus

A desirable locus for DNA barcoding should be standardized (so that large databases of sequences for that locus can be developed), present in most of the taxa of interest and sequencable without species-specific PCR primers, short enough to be easily sequenced with current technology, and provide a large variation between species yet a relatively small amount of variation within a species.

Although several loci have been suggested, a common set of choices are:

  • For animals and many other eukaryotes, the mitochondrial CO1 gene
  • For land plants, the concatenation of the rbcL and matK chloroplast genes

Read more about this topic:  DNA Barcode

Famous quotes containing the words choice of, choice and/or locus:

    Then did they strive with emulation who should repeat most wise maxims importing the necessity of suspicion in the choice of our friends—such as “mistrust is the mother of security,” with many more to the same effect.... But notwithstanding the esteem which they professed for suspicion, yet did they think proper to veil it under the name of caution.
    Sarah Fielding (1710–1768)

    European society has always been divided into classes in a way that American society never has been. A European writer considers himself to be part of an old and honorable tradition—of intellectual activity, of letters—and his choice of a vocation does not cause him any uneasy wonder as to whether or not it will cost him all his friends. But this tradition does not exist in America.
    James Baldwin (1924–1987)

    Seeing the locus of joy as the gate
    of a city, or as a lych-gate ...
    Denise Levertov (b. 1923)