iBOL

Building a Bioliterate World

What would it be like to live in a bio-literate world - a world where you could know, in minutes, the name of any animal or plant - any time, anywhere? And not just its name but everything about it - what are its habits, is it endangered, is it dangerous, should it even be there or is it an invader from somewhere else?

How could we use that knowledge to protect our planet's biodiversity and promote human health and well-being?

The International Barcode of Life project (iBOL), the largest biodiversity genomics initiative ever undertaken, is unlocking the door to that world by creating a digital identification system for life.

• Breaking News for Friday, Jul 30, 2010 •

Peter Freeman appointed
Executive Director of iBOL

Dr. Peter Freeman takes up his new post as Executive Director of the International Barcode of Life Consortium on July 1.

BOLD leader wins Ebbe Nielsen Prize

Sujeevan Ratnasingham, the bioinformatics expert behind Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD), has won this year’s Ebbe Nielsen Prize from the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.

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.