Utility of GenBank and the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD) for the identification of forensically important Diptera from Belgium and France

By

Sonet, Gontran
Jordaens, Kurt
Braet, Yves
Bourguignon, Luc
Dupont, Erena
Backeljau, Thierry
De Meyer, Marc
Desmyter, Stijn

Type

Article

Date of Publication

2013

Original Publication

ZooKeys

Volume

365

Pages

307-328

Subjects

BLAST , COI , DNA barcoding , Forensic entomology

Contributed by

Pensoft Publishers

Language

English

Published by

Sofia, Bulgaria Pensoft Publishers

Identifiers

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.365.6027

 

Abstract

Fly larvae living on dead corpses can be used to estimate post-mortem intervals. The identification of these flies is decisive in forensic casework and can be facilitated by using DNA barcodes provided that a representative and comprehensive reference library of DNA barcodes is available.We constructed a local (Belgium and France) reference library of 85 sequences of the COI DNA barcode fragment (mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I gene), from 16 fly species of forensic interest (Calliphoridae, Muscidae, Fanniidae). This library was then used to evaluate the ability of two public libraries (GenBank and the Barcode of Life Data Systems – BOLD) to identify specimens from Belgian and French forensic cases. The public libraries indeed allow a correct identification of most specimens. Yet, some of the identifications remain ambiguous and some forensically important fly species are not, or insufficiently, represented in the reference libraries. Several search options offered by GenBank and BOLD can be used to further improve the identifications obtained from both libraries using DNA barcodes.