Scientists are building a DNA library of the entire planet, a
vast index of everything that's alive (including some things
that might soon not be). But a recent study cautions researchers
to be careful, as a scanning mistake here could have more severe
consequences than getting overcharged at the checkout. The
International Barcode of Life is a proposal to index every singe
organism utterly and unequivocally (they've got nearly half a
million already) - instead of depending on ornithologist's
arguments about exactly what constitutes a certain type of beak,
every lifeform would be indexed according to a specified section
of DNA. Just as you don't need to read an entire book to tell it
apart from others, these DNA barcodes would be shorter than (but
just as unique to the lifeform as) the full DNA sequence. Plus
you don't need the whole animal to do it, which is an ecological
plus - a small skin, spit or stalk sample will be enough for
identification. Killing endangered species to record them would
kind of miss