BIN Assignment Service
Open access to the Barcode Index Number system — assign your DNA barcode sequences to putative species clusters without needing a BOLD account.
What is a BIN?
A Barcode Index Number (BIN) is a stable, citable identifier assigned to a cluster of DNA barcode sequences that correspond to a putative species. BINs are computed by comparing sequences against a global reference graph: sequences that fall within a distance threshold are grouped together, and each group receives a persistent formatted identifier.
BINs serve two practical purposes. First, they let you verify taxonomic names — if sequences carrying different species names cluster into a single BIN, or a single species splits across multiple BINs, that's a signal worth investigating. Second, they provide species-level identifiers that are independent of taxonomy, making them useful for biodiversity monitoring, environmental DNA analysis, and any workflow where stable identifiers matter more than nomenclatural consensus.
The system was introduced in a 2013 paper that has since accumulated more than 2,000 citations across ecology, systematics, and conservation biology.
Ratnasingham S, Hebert PDN (2013) A DNA-Based Registry for All Animal Species: The Barcode Index Number (BIN) System. PLoS ONE 8(7): e66213. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0066213
What this service does
Until now, getting BIN assignments required uploading your data to BOLD. This service makes the algorithm available independently: you provide a link to a compressed FASTA file of COI barcode sequences, and a worker server processes the file and returns BIN assignments for every sequence.
- Accepts gzip, bzip2, zip, and tar.gz compressed FASTA files
- Supports public URLs and presigned S3 URLs for private data
- Returns results as a downloadable archive you can link from your own storage
- Currently supports the COI barcode marker; additional markers are planned
Access
This is a research tool, not a public API. Access is granted to researchers and institutions with a legitimate scientific purpose. There is no fee, but use of BIN assignments in publications requires a citation to the 2013 paper above.