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Genome Center
Department of Forensic Science and Criminology
BARCODE
DNA Barcoding — Species ID
Instructor copy
Select the case to work on Case —

🔎 Identify the species from its DNA barcode (group task)

  1. Step 1 — BLAST the barcode. A short, standardised “barcode” region was sequenced from the sample. Run it against the reference database and read the ranked hits.
  2. Step 2 — Make the call. Use % identity, query coverage and E-value to decide the species — and judge how confident you can be (species, genus-only, fraud, or contamination).

Report your group's species call and conclusion to your instructor, who holds the answer key.

STEP 1 Query & BLAST search

Top BLAST hits

% identity = how much of the aligned sequence matches · Query cover = how much of your sequence aligned · E-value ≈ chance of a match this good by luck (lower = stronger; 0.0 ≈ certain).

STEP 2 Interpretation — make the call

How to decide:
Species-level ID usually needs a top hit around ≥98–99% identity with high query cover and a near-zero E-value.
Check the gap to the next species. If the #1 and #2 hits are different species of the same genus within ~1% identity, you can only call the genus.
Sanity-check the result. Is the best match what was expected? A great match to the wrong organism = mislabelling/fraud; a match to human usually = contamination.

1) Your group's species call:

2) Your group's conclusion:

📋 Your group's answers —

Read these to your instructor. Nothing here is graded — your instructor confirms what's right.

🔑 Answer key — instructor only