Barcodes are found universally on consumer products. They are composed of unique strings of patterns that identify and classify the product. It has become clear that analogous principles can be applied to distinguish species. Each species is characterized by unique strings of nucleotides in its genome that can be used for identification and classification. These nucleotide strings can be determined easily through standardized deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sequencing techniques. DNA barcoding therefore has been proposed as a universal tool for studying the taxonomic diversity of organisms.