Ambitious Project to Sequence Genomes of 1.5 Million Species Kicks Off
ast week, a global consortium of scientists officially launched the Earth BioGenome Project. As Kate Kelland at Reuters reports, the backers are calling the extensive initiative the next “moonshot for biology.” Projected to cost $4.7 billion, it aims to sequence the DNA of the 1.5 million known species of eukaryotic, or complex species of life on Earth. Having a DNA map of so many species, researchers say, will reframe what we know about biology, ecology and biodiversity.
According to a press release, the project is kicking off with a new effort by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, called the Darwin Tree of Life Project, which aims to sequence all 66,000 eukaryotic species found in Great Britain over the next ten years. In total, 17 institutions across the globe, including the Smithsonian, have signed on for the project and will outline their plans in the near future.
Currently, scientists have only sequenced the genomes of about 3,500 species of complex life and only about 100 have been sequenced at “reference quality” which is used for in-depth research. Adding tens of thousands of genomes to that list is nothing short of revolutionary.
“We’re talking about new medicines, new fuels for the future,” Julia Wilson of the Sanger Trust tells Victoria Gill at the BBC. “We’re limited at the moment by our imaginations—we can't even imagine what this would tell us.”
The ambitious idea first came together in 2015 at a meeting spearheaded by Harry A. Lewin, University of California, Davis distinguished professor of evolution and ecology; Gene Robinson, director of the Carl R. Woese University of Illinois’ Institute for Genomic Biology; and W. John Kress, research botanist and curator at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History.
The researchers were inspired by the Human Genome Project. While the historic sequencing of the human genome in 2003 had taken over a decade to do and cost roughly $3 billion at the time (which, if you take inflation into account, would cost an estimated $5 billion t0day), the massive effort dramatically reduced the cost of sequencing services. That puts this massive project within the realm of possibility.
When completed, it’s believed the Earth BioGenome Project will produce an exabyte of data, or 1 billion gigabytes, which will be shared online for free.
It’s hard to say what the gene mapping will lead to. “The gaps in our knowledge are a lot bigger than what we know,” Lewin tells the BBC. “So we're not even filling in the pieces of the puzzle; most of the puzzle is empty.”
But as Jim Smith, director of science at the Wellcome Trust, points out the same was true when researchers first got to work on the Human Genome Project a quarter century ago. “[W]e could not imagine how the DNA sequence produced back then would transform research into human health and disease today,” says Smith. “Embarking on a mission to sequence all life on Earth is no different.
esides the pumpkin spice and surfeit of fun-size candy bars, the best part of fall may very well be the fall foliage. But this year, in parts of the country, Mother Nature has conspired to rob leaf peepers of the harvest gold, flame orange and vibrant burgundies they've grown accustomed to. Maddie Stone at Earther reports that this year is a particularly “meh” one for fall color in parts of the U.S.
The Foliage Network, a website that keeps close tabs on fall color across the nation, more or less gave up on the mid-Atlantic this year, writing in its October 25 report:
Yeeesh. Not sure what else to say about this foliage season in the region. I believe all hopes for a ‘peak’ are long gone. It looks as though the best that can be expected is moderate color. With many trees, especially maples, the leaves are simply turning brown and falling. In many locations, there is a mix of green, some fall color, and bare trees. This is truly a bizarre foliage season.
Brown County Indiana, a leaf-peeping mecca in the Midwest that draws lots of tourists to its flaming forests, is also a dud, with leaves still green at the end of October.
What’s the deal? AccuWeather meteorologist Dale Mohler tells Doyle Rice at USA Today that two things have short-circuited fall color. First, September and early October in the eastern United States were warmer than normal. Leaves are signaled to begin their journey to Colorville when nights begin to cool off causing them to stop producing green chlorophyll, something that just didn’t happen in the right time frame this year. The wet summer also didn’t help. Leaves are showiest when it's relatively dry, and the past summer was one of the wettest on record. That’s led to an outbreak of anthracnose fungus in the South, which causes leaves to just wither up and die.
There have been some literal bright spots. Though the foliage came at a later date this year, by October, the Adirondacks region in northern New York reported “95-100 percent color change and average-to-bright shades of golden-yellow and russet, along with some oranges and red.” The Upper Midwest around the Great Lakes reported “mostly moderate color,” which the Foliage Network classifies as a 31-60 percent change. Some high elevation spots in the West were good. And Maine and New England were also slightly delayed, but eventually let loose their annual barrage of leafy fireworks.
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