The Earth Biogenome Project: Progress and the Challenges Ahead
summary
Global effort aims to sequence 1.8 million eukaryotic species in 10 years, with Phase I targeting ~9,600 taxonomic families in about three years; current network spans ~5,000 participants, 43 member institutions and 50 affiliated projects. Pipeline simplifies to Hi-C and PacBio long reads to produce chromosome-scale assemblies meeting contig N50 1 Mb / scaffold N50 10 Mb at roughly $7–8k each. Tools include the GOAT metadata system and the Descrambler ancestral-reconstruction algorithm; major hurdles are sample access (CBD/Nagoya), whole-genome alignment and annotation at exascale.
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