![]() ![]() From the more than 391,000 known species of plants ( ), hundreds of drugs for treating pain (e.g., opiates) and chronic diseases, including cancer (e.g., taxol), have been produced and commercialized. Fungi are the basis for fermentation to produce wine, beer, and bread, and knowledge gained from yeast genomics has led to improved production strains for brewers and vintners and bioenergy production from waste streams. ![]() More than 25 marine-derived drugs are in preclinical or clinical trials. For example, from invertebrates, such as sponges, mollusks, tunicates, and cone snails, several Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs have been developed for treating cancer (e.g., cytarabine, initially isolated from a sponge), virus infections, and pain ( 7). This “dark matter” of biology could hold the key to unlocking the potential for sustaining planetary ecosystems on which we depend and provide life support systems for a burgeoning world population. Unimaginable biological secrets are held in the genomes of the millions of known and unknown organisms on our planet. Ecosystem collapse on a global scale is a real possibility, making the preservation and conservation of terrestrial, marine, freshwater, desert, and agricultural ecosystems a global imperative for human survival and prosperity. Humanity faces the question of how such massive losses of species diversity will affect the complex ecosystems that sustain life on Earth, including our ability to derive the foods, biomaterials, bioenergy, and medicines necessary to support an expected human population of 9.6 billion by 2050. By the year 2050, up to 50% of existing species may become extinct mainly due to natural resource-intensive industries ( 5). We are in the midst of the sixth great extinction event of life on our planet ( 5), which not only threatens wildlife species but also imperils the global food supply ( 6). The Living Planet Index reported a 58% decline in vertebrate populations during the 42-year period from 1970 to 2012 ( 3), and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimated that ∼23,000 of ∼80,000 species surveyed are approaching extinction ( 4). Data for animals were extracted from the Animal Genome Size Database ( data for plants were extracted from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew ( /cvalues/), and data for fungi were extracted from the Fungal Genome Size Database ( Biodiversity: A Threatened Global Resource Provides a Call to Actionĭespite these great advances, the world’s biodiversity is largely uncharacterized and increasingly threatened by climate change, habitat destruction, species exploitation, and other human-related activities. Genome size as C value is displayed in bars around the outer circle. The second circle shows the transcriptomes available from the NCBI Transcriptome Shotgun Assembly Sequence Database ( ). The current state of genomic information available from NCBI’s GenBank is shown in the inner circle, with complete genomes colored in red, chromosome level in blue, scaffolds in dark gray, and contigs in light gray. Open Tree of Life ( ) synthesis of phylogeny for all of life with resolution to the genus level, and showing phylogenetic information for Archaea (red), Bacteria (purple), Fungi (orange), Plantae (blue), Protista (brown), and Animalia (green). 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.Ĭurrent status of the sequencing of life. We also describe scientific and organizational challenges in executing such an ambitious project, and the structure proposed to achieve the project’s goals. 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. 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. ![]() 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. These challenges require fundamental new knowledge of the organization, evolution, functions, and interactions among millions of the planet’s organisms. 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. ![]()
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