Scientists launch a plan to map complex life-long genes on Earth
Scientists launch a plan to map complex life-long genes on Earth
LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists launched a vast project Thursday to map the genetic code of the 1.5 million known species of complex life on earth, with the goal of completing the work within a decade.
They described the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) as "the next mole for biology" after the Human Genome Project, a $ 3 billion, 13 year effort to map the human DNA that was completed in 2003.
The EBP is expected to cost $ 4.7 billion and "will ultimately create a new basis for biology to drive solutions to preserve biodiversity and sustain human societies," said Harris Lewin, a professor at the University of California at the United States and president of the EBP.
"Having the road map, the plans ... will be a tremendous resource for new discoveries, understand the rules of life, how evolution works, new approaches to the conservation of rare and endangered species, and ... new resources for researchers in agriculture and medical fields, "he said at a briefing in London.
This plan will be based on the main research efforts from around the world, including a project led by EE. UU With the aim of sequencing the genetic code of the 66,000 vertebrates, a Chinese project to sequence 10,000 plant genomes and the Global Genome Alliance, which aims to sequence around 200 ant genomes.
In Britain, the genome sequences for red and gray squirrels, the European robin, the Fen spider and the blackberry will be added to the vast database.
It is expected that the volume of biological data that will be collected will be on the "scale of scale", rather than that accumulated by Twitter, YouTube or all astronomy.
Jim Smith, director of science at the global health charity Wellcome Trust, said the project would be "internationally inspiring" and, like the Human Genome Project, had the potential to transform research into health and disease.
"From nature we will obtain information on how to develop new treatments for infectious diseases, identify medicines to slow aging, generate new approaches to feed the world or create new biological materials," he said at the briefing.
So far, less than 3,500 complex life species, or only about 0.2 percent, have had their genomes sequenced. Less than 100 of them have been made at the "reference quality" level useful for researchers to access and learn.
The plan is for the EBP to add many thousands more sequences of reference quality genomes, which, according to scientists, will revolutionize the understanding of biology and evolution, increase conservation efforts and protect biodiversity.
Lewin said signs of a rapid decline in biodiversity and an increase in the number of endangered or extinct species underscored the urgency of the project.
"We desperately need to catalog life on our planet now," he said. "We will do this not because it is easy, but because it is difficult and because it is important to do it."
Report from Kate Kelland; Edition by Andrew Roche
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