Toronto/Guelph – The Ontario Genomics Institute (OGI) has teamed with Washington state mixed-media artist Joseph Rossano, University of Pennsylvania and Costa Rica forest biodiversity ecologist Dr. Daniel Janzen and Ontario biodiversity genomics researcher Dr. Paul Hebert to present an online educational accompaniment to a new art-meets-science exhibition featuring works by Rossano and Janzen.

The exhibition, The Barcode of Life: Environment – Evolution – Exuberance, debuts 6-9 p.m. on 4 December at the Bill Lowe Gallery in Atlanta, and will run through January 30, 2010.

Comprising mixed media sculptures of butterflies and polar bears by Rossano alongside Janzen’s large format photographs of Costa Rican butterflies and caterpillars, the exhibition invites us to consider our impact on the other life forms on our planet as well as the emerging role of DNA barcoding in cataloguing the world’s vast – but threatened – biodiversity.

DNA barcodes, which are incorporated into each of Rossano’s pieces, are, similarly to the barcodes used to identify products at the checkout stand in stores, representations of short stretches of an organism’s DNA that are unique to each individual species of life. Their use in cataloguing biodiversity was pioneered by Hebert, whose team at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario (BIO, at the University of Guelph) leads the world in DNA barcoding efforts. Rossano has entitled his sculpture series BOLD, named for the Barcode of Life Data Systems, the global resource analyzing and retrieving DNA barcodes, developed and curated at BIO.

“I am thrilled to be collaborating with researchers who are leading biodiversity science to the next level, and to be exploring their work and its impact through my art,” commented Rossano. “The interface between art and science offers a unique form of engagement: My sculptures direct viewers on a path of introspection and investigation, which in this case is further enhanced by being able to link to the associated online content developed by OGI.”

Demonstrating Janzen’s visionary concept of a hand-held biodiversity reader, visitors to the exhibit will be able to use mobile devices to scan matrix codes adjacent to each sculpture, which then link them to a series of pages on OGI’s website that provide further information on each species portrayal, the organism it portrays, its DNA barcode – provided by the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) Project, led by Hebert – and DNA barcoding in general, as well as related conservation efforts Janzen spearheads.

“We are delighted with the compelling vision and experience that have evolved out of this collaboration,” commented Dr. Christian Burks, President and CEO of OGI. “In addition to the creative interface between science and art, it also provides a juxtaposition of the pure and applied arts and sciences; DNA barcoding is contributing to our fundamental understanding of biodiversity, but is also being taken up as a practical tool that can be used anywhere that rapid and accurate determination of species identification can be crucial … for example, in threatened environments and ecosystems, at national borders and in food production.”

DNA barcoding promises a massive improvement in the capacity to monitor and manage biodiversity, with profound societal and economic impacts through its numerous applications, including conservation biology, monitoring climate change impact, invasive species detection, identification of disease vectors, ensuring food purity and marketplace fraud detection. The iBOL project is a Canadian-led international consortium that aims to generate and make available to the scientific community 5 million DNA barcodes corresponding to 500,000 species over the next five years.

Joseph Rossano is a celebrated mixed media artist and the creator of the BOLD series of wildlife sculptures. He utilizes formal artistic expression coupled with craftsmanship to create reliquaries for the natural world. In addition to the butterfly sculptures on display, Rossano explores global warming through the plight of the polar bear with an installation that is almost completely devoid of color, called “Whitewashed.” As a child, he attended summer workshops in photography and the study of reptiles and amphibians at the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, one of the most highly regarded incubators of the molecular biology revolution of the past 60 years. Now, he is a master craftsman in glassworking, reflecting his seven year term as glass studio manager for Dale Chihuly and a six year span as Artistic Coordinator and Program Director for Artists in Residency at Waterford Crystal in Ireland.

Dan Janzen is a pioneer in tropical bio-diversity research and the study of the co-evolution of individual plants and animal species. Janzen presents his photographic images of evolving life forms from Costa Rica for the first time in an arts setting. These photographs capture previously undocumented species of caterpillars prior to their unfurling as butterflies in the tropical forest. He is a winner of the Swedish Royal Academy's Crafoord Prize in ecology (a companion prize to the Nobel), a Kyoto Prize Laureate (Japan's most highly valued award for lifetime achievement), and was named a MacArthur Fellow (the “genius award”) in 1989. He and his wife and long-standing collaborator, Winifred Hallwachs, have worked tirelessly to establish and extend the highly biodiverse Area de Conservaciόn Guanacaste in northwest Costa Rica, now a World Heritage Site, to sustain in perpetuity over 160,000 hectares of Pacific marine and coastal ecosystems through dry, montane, cloud and Caribbean rain forests comprising over 2% of the world’s biodiversity.

Paul Hebert is Canada Research Chair of Molecular Biodiversity and Director of the Canadian Centre for DNA Barcoding at the Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, University of Guelph, Ontario. He is also Scientific Director of the International Barcode of Life (iBOL) consortium, overseen by a governing board composed of representatives of organizations around the world who are funding and participating in the project. He first put forward the concept of DNA barcoding in 2003, and has pioneered the global effort to validate and now apply this approach to cataloguing and identifying individual species.