The Barcoding Facility for Organisms and Tissues of Policy Concern (BopCo) aims to develop an expertise forum to facilitate the identification of biological samples of policy concern. Such identifications can rely on traditional morphology-based approaches, which require taxonomic expertise, and/or DNA-based techniques, which demand specific skills and access to a fully equipped molecular laboratory.
The intent of BopCo is (1) to act as a focal point for identifying biological materials upon request, using both morphological and DNA-based techniques, (2) to produce well-documented DNA barcodes of relevant taxa, (3) to maintain reference collections of barcoded organisms and the corresponding DNA barcode databases, and (4) to explore and implement new tools and techniques for species identification and DNA barcoding.