• The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) aims at sequencing genomes of plants, animals, fungi and unicellular eukaryotes, with the goal this year of reaching 3000 genomes sequences.
• The project is a worldwide interdisciplinary effort which incorporates, among others, an initiative promoted by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC) and two of its affiliated societies: Societat Catalana de Biologia (SCB) and Institució Catalana d’Història Natural (ICHN)
The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), initiated on November 2018, is one of the most important scientific projects at this moment worldwide. Its goal is to provide a full catalog of DNA sequences from 1.8 million species of plants, animals, fungi and unicellular eukaryotes. A 50% loss of biodiversity is expected to occur on Earth until the end of this century if nothing is done to slow down climate change and to protect global ecosystems Health. The generation of a digital library with DNA sequences of all known eukaryotic life may help not only to build up effective tools to prevent biodiversity loss, but also to maximize returns to society and human welfare.
After a pilot phase, the project is now scaling up and its state-of-the-art is being presented in a series of articles published by the US National Academy of Sicences in the PNAS . The IBUB researcher MontserratCorominas contributes to these studies as coordinator of the Catalan Initiative of the Earth Biogenome Project (CBP), supported by the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC).
EBP is an international network of networks, coordinating many efforts focusing on particular taxons at national and regional level, such as the Vertebrate Genome Project, the Darwin Tree of Life Project (UK and Ireland) and the European Reference Genome Atlas (Europe). The initiative incorporates 5000 scientists and technicians from 44 institutions in 22 countries in all continents but Antartics and 49 affiliated projects as well.
