Darwin Tree of Life Extension Funding

Life has evolved from a single origin to generate over 1.8 million eukaryotic species. Sequencing the genomes of all species will provide an inventory of life, transform understanding of evolution, catalogue eukaryotic gene toolkits for biology and biotechnology, and enable monitoring of ecosystems under increasing stress. The Darwin Tree of Life (DToL) project was founded to collaboratively sequence all species (~70,000 described) in Britain and Ireland to the highest quality standards to demonstrate the feasibility of large scale biodiversity genomics. We believe that these data will transform biology forever. Our consortium of biodiversity, sequencing and analytic partners has through the last three years - and despite the covid pandemic - built systems for collection, identification, extraction, sequencing, assembly and annotation of genomes at scale, with all data released openly. We will have collected ~5000 species and released ~2000 genomes by the end of the first phase of DToL this year. With the core competencies in place, we are now seeking two years of funding to support our biodiversity and analytic partners in extending their collection and data delivery activities. During these two years we will broaden our funding base to be able to complete our goals by 2030.