Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Review
. 2020 Apr;102(2):222-229.
doi: 10.1111/tpj.14631. Epub 2020 Jan 29.

The Earth BioGenome project: opportunities and challenges for plant genomics and conservation

Moises Exposito-Alonso  1 , Hajk-Georg Drost  2   3 , Hernán A Burbano  4 , Detlef Weigel  2
Affiliations
Free article
Review

The Earth BioGenome project: opportunities and challenges for plant genomics and conservation

Moises Exposito-Alonso et al. Plant J. 2020 Apr.
Free article

Abstract

Sequencing them all. That is the ambitious goal of the recently launched Earth BioGenome project (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115, 4325-4333), which aims to produce reference genomes for all eukaryotic species within the next decade. In this perspective, we discuss the opportunities of this project with a plant focus, but highlight also potential limitations. This includes the question of how to best capture all plant diversity, as the green taxon is one of the most complex clades in the tree of life, with over 300 000 species. For this, we highlight four key points: (i) the unique biological insights that could be gained from studying plants, (ii) their apparent underrepresentation in sequencing efforts given the number of threatened species, (iii) the necessity of phylogenomic methods that are aware of differences in genome complexity and quality, and (iv) the accounting for within-species genetic diversity and the historical aspect of conservation genetics.

Keywords: Earth BioGenome; conservation genomics; genome sequencing.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Adams, M.D., Celniker, S.E., Holt, R.A. et al. (2000) The genome sequence of Drosophila melanogaster. Science, 287, 2185-2195. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.287.5461.2185
    1. Aitken, S.N. and Bemmels, J.B. (2016) Time to get moving: assisted gene flow of forest trees. Evol. Appl. 9, 271-290. https://doi.org/10.1111/eva.12293
    1. Alonso, J.M., Stepanova, A.N., Leisse, T.J. et al. (2003) Genome-wide insertional mutagenesis of Arabidopsis thaliana. Science, 301, 653-657. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1086391
    1. Arnold, B.J., Lahner, B., DaCosta, J.M., Weisman, C.M., Hollister, J.D., Salt, D.E., Bomblies, K. and Yant, L. (2016) Borrowed alleles and convergence in serpentine adaptation. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 113, 8320-8325. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1600405113
    1. Bar-On, Y.M., Phillips, R. and Milo, R. (2018) The biomass distribution on Earth. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, 201711842. Available at: http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/05/15/1711842115 [Accessed May 22, 2018].

Publication types

LinkOut - more resources