UML Researcher Helps to Barcode Life on Earth

Prof. Rick Hochberg collects water samples in Panama.

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While NASA is busy searching for evidence of life on Mars, the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and elsewhere in the solar system, a global network of biologists, taxonomists and research institutions has been working quietly on an equally massive and ambitious project: to identify and catalog every living biological species on planet Earth.

Called the Consortium for the Barcode of Life (CBOL), the project, which was launched in 2004 by the Smithsonian Institution with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, is committed to applying molecular barcode technology as a means of identifying every organism. Rick Hochberg, an assistant professor of zoology in UMass Lowell’s Biological Sciences Department, is involved in CBOL as an associate researcher for the Smithsonian.

“A molecular bar code is a short sequence of DNA, or nucleotides, from a mitochondrial gene called cytochrome c oxidase I,” says Hochberg. “This gene varies by about 1 to 2 percent per species, which means that in theory, each species will have a unique DNA barcode.”

This barcode is significant because it can be sequenced from partial specimens (pieces of skin, hair, etc.), so entire organisms don’t need to be sacrificed. The technique also works with all life stages of an organism (e.g., the larva and adult form of an insect, which often look dramatically different but share the exact same barcode) and can be used to identify cryptic species, i.e., species that look identical (at least to humans). Finally, the barcode can be used to build evolutionary trees to demonstrate relationships among closely related species.

“My particular role in this project is to identify, catalog and barcode all species of the phylum Gastrotricha,” he says. “Gastrotrichs are microscopic, 0.1- to 3-millimeter-long worms present in freshwater and marine environments. They are generally the third most abundant group of microscopic fauna in marine sands, helping to break down organic matter on beaches and playing a part in the sea-floor food web. Yet, surprisingly, these Lilliputian animals are often overlooked or understudied by investigators.”

Hochberg’s role over the summer was to compile the first inventory of marine gastrotrichs from the Bocas del Toro archipelago in Panama. His research involved collecting and identifying all marine gastrotrichs in the region and processing them for barcode sequencing.

“At least a dozen new morphological species were found over the course of two weeks,” he says. “My Panamanian colleagues and I are now in the process of testing if these new species are also distinct at the molecular barcode level. Because no gastrotrichs have ever been barcoded, we’re in essence testing the utility of molecular sequencing for identifying specimens.”

Hochberg’s study forms the basis for a much larger project to collect, identify, catalog and barcode all gastrotrichs of the wider Caribbean, from South Florida to the Guiana-Brazil border. For more information, visit his Laboratory for the Study of Microscopic Invertebrate Diversity.

A close-up view of a gastrotrich taken with a scanning electron microscope.