Laboratoire d'Ecologie Alpine, CNRS UMR 5553, Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, France.
Mol Ecol. 2012 Apr;21(8):2045-50. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2012.05470.x.
Virtually all empirical ecological studies require species identification during data collection. DNA metabarcoding refers to the automated identification of multiple species from a single bulk sample containing entire organisms or from a single environmental sample containing degraded DNA (soil, water, faeces, etc.). It can be implemented for both modern and ancient environmental samples. The availability of next-generation sequencing platforms and the ecologists' need for high-throughput taxon identification have facilitated the emergence of DNA metabarcoding. The potential power of DNA metabarcoding as it is implemented today is limited mainly by its dependency on PCR and by the considerable investment needed to build comprehensive taxonomic reference libraries. Further developments associated with the impressive progress in DNA sequencing will eliminate the currently required DNA amplification step, and comprehensive taxonomic reference libraries composed of whole organellar genomes and repetitive ribosomal nuclear DNA can be built based on the well-curated DNA extract collections maintained by standardized barcoding initiatives. The near-term future of DNA metabarcoding has an enormous potential to boost data acquisition in biodiversity research.
实际上，所有的实证生态学研究都需要在数据收集过程中进行物种鉴定。DNA 条形码是指从包含完整生物体的单个混合样本或包含降解 DNA（土壤、水、粪便等）的单个环境样本中自动识别多种物种的方法。它可用于现代和古代环境样本。下一代测序平台的可用性以及生态学家对高通量分类鉴定的需求促进了 DNA 条形码的出现。目前 DNA 条形码的潜在能力主要受到其对 PCR 的依赖性以及构建全面分类参考文库所需的大量投资的限制。与 DNA 测序令人印象深刻的进展相关的进一步发展将消除目前所需的 DNA 扩增步骤，并且可以基于标准化条形码计划维护的精心管理的 DNA 提取集来构建由整个细胞器基因组和重复核糖体核 DNA 组成的全面分类参考文库。DNA 条形码的近期前景具有极大的潜力来促进生物多样性研究的数据采集。
