ArticlePloS one2019
Assessment of BOLD and GenBank - Their accuracy and reliability for the identification of biological materials.
Article in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 87 papers.
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Who cites it
87 citing papers in PubMed.
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27 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Taxonomic identification of biological materials can be achieved through DNA barcoding, where an unknown "barcode" sequence is compared to a reference database. In many disciplines, obtaining accurate taxonomic identifications can be imperative (e.g., evolutionary biology, food regulatory compliance, forensics). The Barcode of Life DataSystems (BOLD) and GenBank are the main public repositories of DNA barcode sequences. In this study, an assessment of the accuracy and reliability of sequences in these databases was performed. To achieve this, 1) curated reference materials for plants, macro-fungi and insects were obtained from national collections, 2) relevant barcode sequences (rbcL, matK, trnH-psbA, ITS and COI) from these reference samples were generated and used for searching against both databases, and 3) optimal search parameters were determined that ensure the best match to the known species in either database. While GenBank outperformed BOLD for species-level identification of insect taxa (53% and 35%, respectively), both databases performed comparably for plants and macro-fungi (~81% and ~57%, respectively). Results illustrated that using a multi-locus barcode approach increased identification success. This study outlines the utility of the BLAST search tool in GenBank and the BOLD identification engine for taxonomic identifications and identifies some precautions needed when using public sequence repositories in applied scientific disciplines.
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