DNA barcoding for Nee Soon flora and fauna 
167 
Fig. 5. A close-up view of one of the species found in Nee Soon. 
the future technique of choice because it is not only cost-effective, but also yields more 
data. Genome skimming is a viable alternative to plant barcoding, because vegetative 
tissues are naturally enriched with chloroplast genes, thus low coverage sequencing of 
whole-genome extractions can yield enough data for obtaining chloroplast genomes. 
Whole chloroplast genomes automatically cover most plant barcoding genes that 
are located on this genome, while yielding much more information than barcoding 
genes, because whole genomes are much longer (150,000 bp) than all barcoding genes 
combined (<2000 bp). The work yielded chloroplast genomes for -170 species, but we 
hope to eventually cover much of Singapore’s flora. A barcode database for all species 
would contribute towards understanding species interactions as illustrated by our work 
on the diet of Raffles’ banded langur. 
