 Abstract DNA barcoding is a powerful tool for identifying species and understanding biodiversity. This paper presents a novel method for evaluating the quality of DNA barcodes, based on the use of a bioinformatics tool that simulates PCR reactions. The authors compared the taxonomic coverage and resolution of several DNA regions proposed for the barcoding of vertebrates, including the mitochondrial cytochrome B gene and two regions of the nuclear genome. They found that in silico-PCR was able to confirm the correspondence between in vitro and in silico-PCR, but that differences were observed due to the tuning of PCR conditions. The authors concluded that in silico-PCR can be used to improve the performance of a study by allowing the preliminary comparison of multiple DNA regions before selecting one for further analysis. This article was authored by Shazad Waseem, Wiestiaiba, Zundle Stephanie, and others.