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. 2023 Mar 20:8:123.
doi: 10.12688/wellcomeopenres.18925.1. eCollection 2023.

A sampling strategy for genome sequencing the British terrestrial arthropod fauna

Liam Crowley  1 , Heather Allen  2 , Ian Barnes  2 , Douglas Boyes  1   3 , Gavin R Broad  2 , Christopher Fletcher  2 , Peter W H Holland  1 , Inez Januszczak  2 , Mara Lawniczak  4 , Owen T Lewis  1 , Craig R Macadam  2   5 , Peter O Mulhair  1 , Lyndall Pereira da Conceicoa  2   4 , Benjamin W Price  2 , Chris Raper  2 , Olga Sivell  2 , Laura Sivess  2
Affiliations

A sampling strategy for genome sequencing the British terrestrial arthropod fauna

Liam Crowley et al. Wellcome Open Res. .

Abstract

The Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project aims to sequence and assemble high-quality genomes from all eukaryote species in Britain and Ireland, with the first phase of the project concentrating on family-level coverage plus species of particular ecological, biomedical or evolutionary interest. We summarise the processes involved in (1) assessing the UK arthropod fauna and the status of individual species on UK lists; (2) prioritising and collecting species for initial genome sequencing; (3) handling methods to ensure that high-quality genomic DNA is preserved; and (4) compiling standard operating procedures for processing specimens for genome sequencing, identification verification and voucher specimen curation. We briefly explore some lessons learned from the pilot phase of DToL and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Keywords: Collecting; Earth BioGenome Project; Invertebrate; Preservation; Prioritisation; Whole-Genome Sequencing.

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Conflict of interest statement

No competing interests were disclosed.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.. Flow diagram outlining the complete sampling process -
Figure 2.
Figure 2.. Tree of UK arthropod families with annotation of species count per family.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Accumulation curves of the cumulative number of families ( a) and cumulative number of species ( b) collected against the first 190 sampling days at the Wytham Woods genomic observatory.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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