<html><head><style type='text/css'>p { margin: 0; }</style></head><body><div style='font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; color: #000000'><strong>Public Invited to Tour BIOBus at the MBL, <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT3037">September 29</span></strong><br><div style="font-family: Verdana; font-size: 10pt; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"><span><em>Mobile lab part of international conference for biodiversity specialists</em><br style="font-style: italic;"><br></span><span>The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) invites the public to tour the <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT3075"><a href="http://biobus.dev.threestonestudios.com/" target="_blank">BIOBus</a></span>,
a specially equipped mobile field research vehicle that travels the
U.S., collecting insects and other invertebrates for DNA barcoding. The
bus will be parked near the MBL’s Swope Conference Center, 5 North
Street, Woods Hole and open to the public on <span class="Object" id="OBJ_PREFIX_DWT3076">Wednesday, September 29</span> from 10 AM to 4 PM.</span><span><br><br>Since
2008, the BIOBus, operated by the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario,
has been carrying researchers to biodiversity hotspots across North
America. Hundreds of thousands of specimens representing almost 10,000
species have been collected for purposes of DNA barcoding, a taxonomic
method that uses a genetic marker in an organism's DNA to identify it as
belonging to a particular species the way a supermarket scanner
distinguishes products using the black stripes of the Universal Product
Code. <br><br>The BIOBus visit to Woods Hole is part of the 2010 TDWG
Annual Conference being held this week at the MBL. TDWG is a non-profit,
international, scientific and educational association whose main goal
is to promote a wider and more effective circulation of information
about the world's heritage of biological organisms. More than 200
bioinformatics specialists, biologists, information scientists,
botanists, curators, and librarians from Germany, Finland, Brazil,
Taiwan, Africa, and a host of other countries are attending the
conference, which is sponsored by the Encyclopedia of Life, the MBL, the
MBLWHOI Library, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the Atlas of
Living Australia, and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility.<br><br></span><br><span><br></span></div><span><span name="x"></span><br></span></div></body></html>