iBOL releases 156K barcode records to BOLD, GenBank

The first large blocks of iBOL data have been released to NCBI GenBank and are publicly accessible on the Internet from the Barcode of Life Data (BOLD) Systems web site.

The release was made in two stages:

1) 102,772 sequences for 101,214 specimens analyzed at the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding during the first two quarters of the iBOL pre-activation period (July1-December 31, 2009) and released on January 28.

2) 54,415 sequences from 53,889 specimens, for the third quarter of the iBOL pre-activation period (January 1- March 31) and released on April 18.

The specimens came from collaborators in 163 countries. Biggest source was Costa Rica (20 percent of specimens analyzed), followed by United States (19), Canada (16) and Mexico (6).

Barcode data will now be released quarterly with each barcode record going out in two stages. The initial stage will include barcode sequence(s), trace files, high-level (ordinal) taxonomic assignment, GPS co-ordinates and the country of collection. The second stage will feature a more precise taxonomic assignment and ancillary data, such as images, for each specimen.