ABSTRACT
This chapter presents how the introduction of DNA barcoding brought with it a flurry of excitement and irritation within taxonomic circles. It describes some of the biological, technological, organizational, political and human labour required to create and launch cytochrome oxidase 1 (CO1) as the genetic marker that would underpin the DNA barcode for global life. The selection of particular gene regions for diagnosing species identity could be aided by referring to a reservoir of banked DNA sequences stored in the publicly accessible database GenBank. The naturalization of the gene and its remarkable affordances for the barcoding of animal species requires us to forget the process of assembling CO1, and to forget that CO1 is an achievement that could have been contestable at many points along the way. Dwelling on the search for the plant barcode, the chapter also describes the transition from simple to complex once again, from naturalized objects to denaturalized artefacts.
