TY - JOUR
T1 - Earth BioGenome Project
T2 - Sequencing life for the future of life
AU - Lewin, Harris A.
AU - Robinson, Gene E.
AU - Kress, W. John
AU - Baker, William J.
AU - Coddington, Jonathan
AU - Crandall, Keith A.
AU - Durbin, Richard
AU - Edwards, Scott V.
AU - Forest, Félix
AU - Gilbert, M. Thomas P.
AU - Goldstein, Melissa M.
AU - Grigoriev, Igor V.
AU - Hackett, Kevin J.
AU - Haussler, David
AU - Jarvis, Erich D.
AU - Johnson, Warren E.
AU - Patrinos, Aristides
AU - Richards, Stephen
AU - Castilla-Rubio, Juan Carlos
AU - Van Sluys, Marie Anne
AU - Soltis, Pamela S.
AU - Xu, Xun
AU - Yang, Huanming
AU - Zhang, Guojie
N1 - Funding Information:
The successful systematic sequencing of all life on Earth will not be possible without an organized and sustained effort. Although geographic and taxon-based communities are working on related initiatives, few of them are coordinated with each other, and most are not focused on whole-genome sequencing. A global “network of communities,” proposed as an EBP organizational structure (see below), is a realistic strategy for achieving the grand challenge goal of sequencing all life on Earth. Among the examples of organized taxon-based communities, those working on cultured and uncultured Bacteria and Archaea are benefitting from well-defined objectives and global funding sources. The National Microbiome Initiative (NMI) was launched in 2016 by the US Office of Science and Technology Policy and is supported by $121 million from multiple stakeholder federal agencies (29). The NMI will receive an additional $400 million in support from private companies and philanthropies. The Earth Microbiome Project is an ambitious parallel global effort to characterize microbial diversity (10).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
PY - 2018/4/24
Y1 - 2018/4/24
N2 - Increasing our understanding of Earth's biodiversity and responsibly stewarding its resources are among the most crucial scientific and social challenges of the new millennium. These challenges require fundamental new knowledge of the organization, evolution, functions, and interactions among millions of the planet's organisms. Herein, we present a perspective on the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a moonshot for biology that aims to sequence, catalog, and characterize the genomes of all of Earth's eukaryotic biodiversity over a period of 10 years. The outcomes of the EBP will inform a broad range of major issues facing humanity, such as the impact of climate change on biodiversity, the conservation of endangered species and ecosystems, and the preservation and enhancement of ecosystem services. We describe hurdles that the project faces, including data-sharing policies that ensure a permanent, freely available resource for future scientific discovery while respecting access and benefit sharing guidelines of the Nagoya Protocol. We also describe scientific and organizational challenges in executing such an ambitious project, and the structure proposed to achieve the project's goals. The far-reaching potential benefits of creating an open digital repository of genomic information for life on Earth can be realized only by a coordinated international effort.
AB - Increasing our understanding of Earth's biodiversity and responsibly stewarding its resources are among the most crucial scientific and social challenges of the new millennium. These challenges require fundamental new knowledge of the organization, evolution, functions, and interactions among millions of the planet's organisms. Herein, we present a perspective on the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a moonshot for biology that aims to sequence, catalog, and characterize the genomes of all of Earth's eukaryotic biodiversity over a period of 10 years. The outcomes of the EBP will inform a broad range of major issues facing humanity, such as the impact of climate change on biodiversity, the conservation of endangered species and ecosystems, and the preservation and enhancement of ecosystem services. We describe hurdles that the project faces, including data-sharing policies that ensure a permanent, freely available resource for future scientific discovery while respecting access and benefit sharing guidelines of the Nagoya Protocol. We also describe scientific and organizational challenges in executing such an ambitious project, and the structure proposed to achieve the project's goals. The far-reaching potential benefits of creating an open digital repository of genomic information for life on Earth can be realized only by a coordinated international effort.
KW - Access and benefit sharing
KW - Biodiversity
KW - Data science
KW - Genome sequencing
KW - Genomics
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U2 - 10.1073/pnas.1720115115
DO - 10.1073/pnas.1720115115
M3 - Review article
C2 - 29686065
AN - SCOPUS:85046353202
SN - 0027-8424
VL - 115
SP - 4325
EP - 4333
JO - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
IS - 17
ER -