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. 2022 Jan 25;119(4):e2115642118.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.2115642118.

Sequence locally, think globally: The Darwin Tree of Life Project

Darwin Tree of Life Project Consortium
Collaborators

Sequence locally, think globally: The Darwin Tree of Life Project

Darwin Tree of Life Project Consortium. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

The goals of the Earth Biogenome Project-to sequence the genomes of all eukaryotic life on earth-are as daunting as they are ambitious. The Darwin Tree of Life Project was founded to demonstrate the credibility of these goals and to deliver at-scale genome sequences of unprecedented quality for a biogeographic region: the archipelago of islands that constitute Britain and Ireland. The Darwin Tree of Life Project is a collaboration between biodiversity organizations (museums, botanical gardens, and biodiversity institutes) and genomics institutes. Together, we have built a workflow that collects specimens from the field, robustly identifies them, performs sequencing, generates high-quality, curated assemblies, and releases these openly for the global community to use to build future science and conservation efforts.

Keywords: assembly; biodiversity; genome; sequencing.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Sequencing eukaryotic life at scale. The DToL partners have developed a cohesive end-to-end process to take organisms from the field through to publication of high-quality assembled and annotated genomes in the public domain. By collating specimen metadata and tracking information through identification, DNA barcoding, extraction, sequencing, assembly, curation, annotation, and submission, the process assures that genomes are published with rich, informative, and accurate descriptors.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
DToL: sequencing across the diversity of eukaryotes. A terabase of genomes: Eukaryotic species sequenced or undergoing sequencing in DToL to October 2021. The outer circle (black) shows estimated genome size and the middle ring (purple) the BUSCO (Eukaryota ortholog set) completeness of preliminary assemblies. The inner ring (red) shows the 200 species for which genomes have already been submitted to the ENA by DToL. The tree shows species relationships from the National Center for Biotechnology Information TaxonomyDB (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/taxonomy) obtained using ETE (http://etetoolkit.org/). The figure was generated using IToL (https://itol.embl.de/) and postprocessed in Adobe Illustrator. The tree is available at https://itol.embl.de/shared/mblaxter2.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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