Korea will take the lead in plant DNA barcoding in Northeast Asia

Korea Environmental Industry & Technology Institute (KEITI) said Korea will take the lead in developing trees’ DNA barcoding in Northeast Asia. DNA barcoding is a technique to distinguish species of organisms using a short DNA sequence from the genome.

Creating standard marker is necessary in developing DNA barcode. An international plant barcoding working group conducted a project to develop standard DNA barcode and published the result in an academic journal, Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS 196: 12794-12797, 2009), whose impact factor is nearly 10. Among the working group members, six belonged to a Korean research team, which had taken part in a research project by KEITI.

Two genes – matK and rbcL – were selected as major markers for plant DNA barcoding and a primer which was developed in Korea was designated as the international standard for matK. Thus, the location of the primer will be used as standard when matK is used as plant DNA barcode.

In addition, in the project to develop tree DNA barcode around the world, which is conducted as a part of plant DNA barcode development, Korea takes the lead in standardization of tree barcode production process, production of tree barcode and development of DB, and establishment of network for using tree barcode in Northeast Asia.

Led by the U.S., the international tree DNA barcoding project is being carried out in the following eight regions -- Europe, North America, South America, Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, India and Middle East, Africa, Australia and Oceania. A Korean research team led by professor Gi-jung Kim takes the responsibility of developing tree DNA barcode in Northeast Asia and is partly involved in the same project in Southeast Asia.

If the tree DNA barcode is developed, it will be used as an important tool for characterization in wide range of fields including forest resources management, quarantine for import and export, medicinal plant management, plant species management, and ecological research. Also, the result of the project will be used as fundamental data for combining biotechnology, information technology, and energy technology, and managing biological resources.