Erickson David L, Kress W John
Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Washington, DC, USA.
Methods Mol Biol. 2012;858:459-65. doi: 10.1007/978-1-61779-591-6_23.
It is a risky task to attempt to predict the direction that DNA barcoding and its applications may take in the future. In a very short time, the endeavor of DNA barcoding has gone from being a tool to facilitate taxonomy in difficult to identify species, to an ambitious, global initiative that seeks to tackle such pertinent and challenging issues as quantifying global biodiversity, revolutionizing the forensic identifications of species, advancing the study of interactions among species, and promoting the reconstruction of evolutionary relationships within communities. The core element of DNA barcoding will always remain the same: the generation of a set of well-identified samples collected and genotyped at one or more genetic barcode markers and assembled into a properly curated database. But the application of this body of data will depend on the creativity and need of the research community in using a "gold standard" of annotated DNA sequence data at the species level. We foresee several areas where the application of DNA barcode data is likely to yield important evolutionary, ecological, and societal insights, and while far from exclusive, provide examples of how DNA barcode data will continue to empower scientists to address hypothesis-driven research. Three areas of immediate and obvious concern are (1) biodiversity inventories, (2) phylogenetic applications, and (3) species interactions.
试图预测DNA条形码技术及其应用在未来的发展方向是一项冒险的任务。在很短的时间内，DNA条形码技术的努力已经从一种便于对难以鉴定的物种进行分类的工具，发展成为一项雄心勃勃的全球倡议，旨在解决诸如量化全球生物多样性、彻底变革物种的法医鉴定、推进物种间相互作用的研究以及促进群落内进化关系的重建等相关且具有挑战性的问题。DNA条形码技术的核心要素将始终保持不变：生成一组经过良好鉴定的样本，这些样本在一个或多个基因条形码标记处进行收集和基因分型，并组装到一个精心策划的数据库中。但是，这些数据的应用将取决于研究界在使用物种水平上经过注释的DNA序列数据的“黄金标准”时的创造力和需求。我们预见到，DNA条形码数据的应用可能会在几个领域产生重要的进化、生态和社会见解，并且虽然远非排他性的，但我们将举例说明DNA条形码数据将如何继续使科学家能够开展假设驱动的研究。三个直接且明显值得关注的领域是：（1）生物多样性清查，（2）系统发育应用，以及（3）物种相互作用。
