United Kingdom

National Node

National Organization

iBOL-UK

SSC Representative: Peter Hollingsworth
Royal Botanical Garden Edinburgh

SSC Alternate: Alfried Vogler
Natural History Museum, London

Vision

The UK makes a major contribution to the iBOL 500K target by providing samples, DNA barcode sequences, taxonomic verifications, the development of protocols and data analysis methods, and leadership for individual taxonomic groups.

Mission

iBOL-UK will deliver this vision by focusing on four areas:

1. The UK is home to three major taxonomic institutions (Natural History Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh), as well as many other smaller collections-based institutes. iBOL-UK aims to harness the expertise and collections of these institutes to make a major contribution towards the sample supply chain for iBOL.

2. The UK currently has funding for DNA barcoding projects totalling about £3.6 million, but many of these projects involve barcoding as a minority component. iBOL-UK aims to develop funding proposals to upscale the amount of DNA barcode sequencing being undertaking in the UK by an additional 20K samples per year.

3. Several research groups in the UK are actively pursuing methodological developments, data analysis methods or barcoding protocol development. iBOL-UK aims to make a general contribution towards international efforts to enhance the infra-structure for the use of sequence data for characterising biodiversity.

4. Multiple research groups are involved in DNA barcoding activities in the UK (currently 28 groups are involved in the UK-iBOL Network). iBOL-UK aims to act as an information conduit to maximize the benefits of the broader iBOL project for these researchers, and in turn maximise their contributions towards the iBOL project.

Goals

• Establish supply chain between taxonomic/biodiversity researchers, biodiversity collections and DNA barcoding factories
• Establish/enhance medium throughput barcoding facilities in the UK
• Enhance protocols and methodologies for DNA barcoding
• Establish effective communication mechanism between UK researchers and the iBOL project to maximise benefits to both

– Activities

– Organization

– Funding Plan

– Core Facilities

– Projects and Researchers