The document summarizes progress made in DNA barcoding since the 2009 conference in Mexico City, including increased participation from non-academic sectors, acceleration of plant barcoding studies, adoption of barcoding standards by government agencies, expanded applications of barcoding, and increased data sharing through projects mining tissue from major collections. It notes barcoding is near a tipping point but faces challenges around scaling up efforts to build a comprehensive reference library, including engaging more collections and fieldwork with taxonomy support.

1. The Barcoding Enterprise:
CBOL’s view
for 2011 to 2015
Dr. Scott E. Miller, Chair
Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL)
Deputy Under Secretary for Collections
Smithsonian Institution
Washington, DC
www.barcodeoflife.org; MillerS@si.edu

2. Who Came to Adelaide?
463 delegates from 61 countries
Large representation by non-academic
sectors
– Government officials, regulatory agencies
– Private companies
– Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs)
ALA, Others from Biodiversity Informatics

3. Diverse with respect to:
Single, few, many barcoding projects/lab
Specimens from collections, fieldwork
Reasons for barcoding:
– 72% - Biodiversity inventories
– 52% - Phylogenetics
– 46% - Ecological applications
– 42% - Taxonomy
– 35% - Building the reference library

4. Diverse with respect to:
Personal/group labs, core facilities
Producing 10s, 100s, 1000s of barcodes
Relying on sequencing services from:
– 32% - Commercial sequencing service
– 29% - Canadian Centre for DNA barcoding
– 24% - Personal or group lab
– 28% - Institutional core facility

5. Data Release for Adelaide
379 abstracts being presented:
225 presenters responded to survey on
data for their presentations:
– 125 presenters have private BOLD data
– Of these, 88 have only private BOLD data
– 70 keep their data only on personal computers
– 60 have public GenBank records
– 44 more have unpublished GenBank data
– 18 have public BOLD data projects

6. Plant Barcoding Progress
Acceleration of plant barcode studies
Assessment of matK and rbcL
Expansion of data on ITS
Application to illegal logging
64 Plant presentations in Adelaide
– More than Fish (55) and Fungi (38)
Implementation in GenBank delayed

7. Progress since Mexico City, 2009
Approval soon of standard Fungal Barcode
First adoption by government agency, the US
Food and Drug Administration (FDA);
– Angelo Ferrari’s poster on Italy’s FDA
Expanded use of next-generation
sequencing, especially analysis of mixtures
--Adelaide session on Environmental DNA
(18 presentations)
Expanded applications in ecology, evolution

8. Progress on Specimen Sources
Large-scale tissue mining projects in major
collections:
– Australian National Insect Collection, tens of
thousands of specimens
– USNM bird frozen tissue: 3000 specimens,
1147 newly barcoded species
– USNM and AMNH mammal frozen tissue
– CBS fungal collection
- Smithsonian National Zoo
– Discussions underway with many others

9. An Experiment in Museum Tissue
Mining and Fast Data Release
Bird frozen tissue sampling winter/spring
Sequencing completed in September
Sequence quality control in October
Taxonomic checking in early November
– Obvious errors removed
– Minor discrepancies remain
Data released for Adelaide Conference
- Fort Lauderdale Protocol for early data release
– Crowd-sourced annotation by community
– Will data be mis-used??

10. Progress on Informatics
Continued Barcoding leadership in
biodiversity informatics and cybertaxonomy
– Partnerships with GBIF, Encyclopedia of Life,
Atlas of Living Australia
– Biodiversity WG of Genomics Standards
Consortium
– e-Biosphere workshop (Copenhagen, July 2012)
and conference (London, March 2013)
BOLD 3.0 with group annotation
Biorepositories.org – approved Voucher IDs

11. Barcoding and the CBD
Recognition of Non-Commercial Research in
Nagoya Protocol, Access and Benefit Sharing
Memorandum of Understanding, iBOL-CBD

12. Barcoding Near a Tipping Point
Create partnerships with user communities
(government agencies, private companies)
Engage more major collections with frozen
tissue and younger identified specimens
Engage new collecting programs with
teams of taxonomists (e.g., Moorea)
Implement early and full data release,
embrace community-based data curation
(Fort Lauderdale Protocol)

13. Major Issues for Adelaide:
Scaling Up!
iBOL and other projects have high goals for
building reference library:
– Can we find sufficient voucher specimens?
– Will vouchers have reliable species IDs? Role of
interim taxonomy and BINs?
– Will barcoding become a truly Open Science and
lead Biodiversity Informatics and cybertaxonomy?
– Will new core facilities, BOLD mirror databases
be built to increase global productivity?
– Role of NGS and other new technologies?

14. Sincere thanks to:
– Andy Lowe and Local Organizing Committee
– Co-hosts, Sponsors, Exhibitors
– Presenters and other delegates
– CBOL Secretariat Staff
Celebrate our accomplishments
Remember our vision and mission
Be open to user communities, international
partners, education applications
Challenge each other to take risks