Smithsonian Institution DNA Barcoding Network

The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest system of museums engaged in research, education, and public exhibits. The Institution includes the National Museum of Natural History, the National Zoological Park, the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center on Chesapeake Bay, and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. The Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL) is an international initiative to develop and coordinate barcoding activities and is hosted by the National Museum of Natural History. Taxonomists, evolutionary biologists and ecologists at the Smithsonian are using barcode data in their research, preserving the voucher specimens in a Smithsonian collection, and submitting the data to GenBank. DNA barcoding is also rapidly becoming a standard part of collection management. A growing portion of the Smithsonian’s frozen tissue collections are being barcoded and represented in GenBank.