What is the Barcode of Life?

The Barcode of Life is a project to create a public collection of reference sequences from vouchered specimens of all species of life. A Barcode sequence is a short nucleotide sequence from a standard genetic locus for use in species identification. For animals, this standard genetic locus is a 650 base pair region on the 5' end of the mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase subunit I (COI) gene.

How are Barcodes submitted, stored, and displayed?

The NCBI provides a web-based Barcode Submission Tool (BarSTool) that can be used to submit sets of Barcode sequences to GenBank. In addition to the sequence data, the Barcode Submission Tool collects other information to help identify the sequence's source organism and to support the accuracy of the sequence. This information includes, but is not limited to, the following: specimen voucher, geographic location, collection date, primer data, and trace files. Submitters are prompted for this information to ensure that each Barcode record is complete at the time of submission.

Submitters may also use Sequin to create and submit sets of Barcode records, but they are not prompted for any specific Barcode information during submission. Submitters may then be required to update their records when they are processed to be labeled as a Barcode set.

Barcode records are stored and displayed in the GenBank databases. Examples of Barcodes records can be found, for example, in the Entrez Nucleotide and in the Entrez PopSet databases.