Fish DNA barcoding: A comprehensive survey of bioinformatics tools and databases

Abstract

A paradigm shift took place with the advent of molecular taxonomy, which is a combinatorial approach utilizing both computational and molecular biology. DNA barcoding is a reliable, cost-effective method that uses the cytochrome c oxidase I (COI) mitochondrial gene to recognize animal species. This gene has a short subsequence 658 bp region that is used for species discrimination. The availability of amplification standard operation protocols and sequence databases for barcoding enables the use of COI sequences for studying taxonomic aspects, particularly in phylogeny, phylogeography, and population genetics studies. The overall process of DNA barcoding in fish is widely performed under the umbrella of molecular and computational methods. In this chapter, we report the current status of fish DNA. barcoding with respect to the databases and software tools available in the public domain.