Finding Every Species

Microsofts slave writes "A hugely ambitious project to find and name every species on Earth within the next 25 years has been launched by scientists. The internet and the development of DNA sequencing technology make the goal achievable, they say."

Comments

Re:Not as easy as it sounds.

[the gnat]

The current rate of discovery is a mere 10,000 a year. With an estimated 100 milion species, it'd take, well, forever.

I think the idea is to identify species based on a genomic fingerprint- the usual marker is actually the sequence of 16S RNA (part of the ribosome). They simply collect as many samples as possible and feed them into the sequencer, and then use computers to determine the relationships.

At least that's what I assume from the article. I don't really think this is worthwhile, because it's easy for two organisms to be nearly identical on the sequence level and still be non-mating. You could have a single polymorphism be the only thing separating two species simply because of change in color, metabolism, etc., coupled with reproductive isolation. In particular, 16S RNA is used for large-scale cladistics because it changes relatively little over time, but this means that the difference between an Amazonian Spotted Yellow Frog and an Amazonian Spotted Green Frog may be nil at that level.

If they're looking at entire genomes, on the other hand, the technology simply won't be powerful enough for some time, particularly if they run into weird or huge genomes. Our genome is small compared to some of the projects underway, and the problem with everything on that scale is figuring out the damn repeats.

Re:And Then

[divide overflow]

I think it's possible that somebody wildly overestimated the scope of the project. Or wildly underestimated the resources that could be applied to it. Or both.

Many different factors caused the project to take less time than initially planned, not the least of which was clever algorythmic techniques to speed up the decoding process. All of them combined led to a quicker result.

As I understand it, the vast majority of pure research is being funded by private companies now. So even if that research is being done at universities-- which it is, largely-- it's being paid for with corporate dollars. Which, some people's opinions to the contrary, is not inherently a bad thing.

I believe you meant "basic" research rather than "pure" research. Basic research (as opposed to "applied" research) is "experimental and theoretical work undertaken primarily to acquire new knowledge without a specific application in view". There has been a general decline in spending on basic research by corporations in recent years due to the high cost and uncertainty of return on the investment, leading to the shift of basic research to universities. This has had good and bad effects on universities, who have benefited from the funds but have also found increasing limitations and restrictions placed upon them by their corporate sponsors. For example, there have been well documented reports of drug companies putting restrictions in grant contracts to public researchers preventing them from telling the public of any hazardous effects of their drugs, even when those same drugs are in current use by the public.

So their is no black or white answer to which is better, public or private research. Perhaps it is good to have both, just as it is good to have a multiplicity of competitors in a market economy. It may just help to keep everyone honest.

Anthropology

[ndogg]

They should start asking the indiginous people of the various places they go to about the animals they encounter, especially if they are nomadic. The folklore, myths, traditions, stories, etc. often serve purposes beyond that of creating a basis for religion. Many of them have been created to help them survive the environment they live in. Not only that, but they also seem to allow to live within these environments without destroying them. This is something anthropologists have known for some time now. Western biologists often have the bad habit of dismissing these things, particularly if they are tribal, under the misconceived notion that they are "primitive" and could not possibly understand the plants and animals around them, when in fact it's their vast amounts of knowledge of the plants and animals around them that allows them to survive.