Established in 2008, the International Barcode of Life Consortium (iBOL, http://www.ibol.org/) is a research alliance of nations with the desire to transform biodiversity science by building the DNA barcode reference libraries, the sequencing facilities, the informatics platforms, the analytical protocols, and the international collaboration required to inventory and assess biodiversity.
iBOL has overseen the completion of one major program, BARCODE 500K, and a second program, BIOSCAN runs for seven years from June 2019. The first program barcoded 500,000 species reflecting the investment of $150 million by research organizations in 25 nations. Building on this success, BIOSCAN will extend barcode coverage to 2.5 million species by 2025. This program will stimulate activation of the Planetary Biodiversity Mission (PBM) – iBOL’s final project. PBM is a research initiative that will deliver a comprehensive understanding of the composition and distribution of multi-cellular life by 2045.
iBOL maintains the Barcode of Life Data System (BOLD, http://www.boldsystems.org/). BOLD is a cloud-based data storage and analysis platform developed at the Centre for Biodiversity Genomics in Canada. It consists of four main modules, a data portal, an educational portal, a registry of BINs (putative species), and a data collection and analysis workbench.