Polar Barcoding

The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) was a cool project in 2005, where a team went to Churchill Manitoba and collected some specimens and then Barcoded them. They managed to get 593 different species. I think that this is all part of the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL), which is a pretty neat idea. While just cataloging all the animal life is awesome it does lack some descriptive information. But what is really awesome is that it is something even an amateur scientist will be able to do soon as this technology gets cheaper. The gene that was chosen as the gene to identify species was cytochrome c oxidase 1, and from just a single run of around 600bp. I guess it is too bad that plants are not included in this kind of survey because the gene is mitochondrial.
The CBOL blog is decent with the newest goings on in barcoding.