Genetic sequences in a cell's mitochondria can be used to accurately determine species. Could this be because they are responsible for creating what they identify? Nick Lane investigates.
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Additional information
See Editorial, page 251, and the whole biodiversity special at www.nature.com/darwin .
Nick Lane is the first Provost's Venture Research Fellow at University College London and author of Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution.
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Lane, N. Biodiversity: On the origin of bar codes. Nature 462, 272–274 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1038/462272a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/462272a
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