European Journal of Biotechnology and Bioscience

Authors
Raju Ram, Chandan Haldar

Abstract
With millions of species and their life-stage transformations, the animal kingdom provides a challenging target for taxonomy. Present review has suggested that a DNA-based identification system, founded on the mitochondrial gene, cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI), can aid the resolution of this diversity. In previous, scientists have validated the ability of COI sequences to diagnose species in certain taxonomic groups, the present study extends these analyses across the animal kingdom. Their results indicate that sequence divergences at COI regularly enable the discrimination of closely allied species in all animal phyla. DNA barcoding aims to offer an effective method for species-level identifications and, as such, will contribute powerfully to taxonomic and biodiversity research. As the number of DNA barcode sequences accumulates, however, these data will also provide a unique ‘horizontal’ genomics perspective with broad implications. For example, here we compare the goals and methods of DNA barcoding with those of molecular phylogenetic and population genetics, and suggest that DNA barcoding can complement current research in these areas by providing background information that will be helpful in the selection of taxa for advance analyses. DNA barcoding method can discriminate sample as known to unknown but it also has the ability to detect previously un-sampled species as distinct. In this review, we present an overview of DNA barcoding and introduce recent advances and their role as a promising tool for biodiversity conservation.