Barcoding in Europe and the need for barcode data management tools

ECBOL, the European Consortium for the Barcode of Life, was created in 2007 and will hold its second conference (EC BOL2; http://ecbol2.bio.uminho.pt/) on June 2-4 in Braga, Portugal. To help prepare for the conference, the Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures (CBS, Utrecht, Netherlands) hosted a two-day meeting of the Network of European Leading Labs (NELL), with participation by:

· Joint Experimental Molecular Unit( JEMU), a partnership between the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, Brussels and the Royal Museum for Central Africa, Tervuren, Belgium

· Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle, Paris, France

· Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Germany

· Senckenberg Forschungsinstitut und Naturmuseum Frankfurt, Germany

· Zoologisches Forschungsmuseum Alexander Koenig, Bonn, Germany

· Naturalis National Museum of Natural History, Leiden, Netherlands

· National Centre for Biodiversity/Univ. Waginingen, Netherlands

· CBS-KNAW Fungal Biodiversity Centre, Centraalbureau voor Schimmelcultures, Netherlands

· Museum & Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warszaw, Poland

· Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, UK

· Natural History Museum, London, UK

Perhaps the greatest challenge faced in common by the members of NELL is managing data throughout the barcoding process. BOLD is a great place for analyzing records once they have been assembled, but many labs other than BIO at Guelph are struggling to develop their own systems for managing and integrating workflows that involve:

· Newly collected specimens in the field (latitude, longitude, habitat, environmental parameters, etc.)

· Vouchers that are being deposited in or taken from museums, herbaria, and other biorepositories

· Tissue subsamples and DNA extracts that come from vouchers

· Digital images of specimens

· Laboratory procedures, reagents and primers used, PCR protocol,

· Results of PCR

· Trace files from sequencer,

· Repeat processing of failed samples, and

· Other components of the barcoding pipeline.

Each member lab of NELL faces the same problem, but the traditional practices in each institution make it impossible for a single software system to be adopted universally. Nevertheless, there may be systems that are sufficiently powerful and flexible that they can be modified to adapt to each local situation.

CBOL is in discussions with several groups working on this problem. We hope to launch a series of “Webinars” (web-based seminars) on this, and other topics, where the candidate software systems will be presented, and Connect members will be given opportunities to e-mail questions and hold discussions on the community network. Members of the Connect Community Network and CBOL Member Organizations will be getting notifications about these webinars, so keep an eye open for them.