Dave Torr wrote:
Maybe I'm missing something (and I'm no expert on DNA!) ... Since as a
"layman" I assumed DNA controlled the appearance of an animal how can
> this be the case?
I'm not a DNA expert either, but I'm interested in bioinformatics (and
may study it formally one day.)
The Barcode of Life Datasystems (BOLD) home page has a PDF at the bottom
describing how the "barcode" works:
http://www.barcodinglife.org/libhtml/docs/bold.pdf
From the introduction:
A 648-bp region of the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) gene forms
the primary barcode sequence for members of the animal kingdom
(Hebert et al. 2003a; Savolainen et al. 2005).
I've only skimmed through the document, but I would hope that they
tested other regions of DNA when coming up with their proposed
splits and lumps - relying on a single region for all eukaryotic
life seems a little simplistic to me - especially down to the species
level.
While lumping seven of the North American gull species would make
life easier for everyone, I'd like to see corroborating evidence from
other gene regions. (I haven't read the paper, so hopefully this is
indeed the case.)
--
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Paul Taylor Veni, vidi, tici -
I came, I saw, I ticked.
===============================
www.birding-aus.org
birding-aus.blogspot.com
To unsubscribe from this mailing list,
send the message:
unsubscribe
(in the body of the message, with no Subject line)
to:
===============================
|
