The University of Connecticut joined the global Earth Biogenome Project (EBP) initiative as an institutional partner. The Earth Biogenome Project has outlined the “moonshot for biology”, with the goal of sequencing the DNA of all life on Earth in 10 years. Guiding the work of the global team are three main goals: 1) Benefiting Human Welfare through foundational work supporting the development of new biological synthetic fuels, generating new bio materials, developing new treatments for infectious and inherited diseases, and generating new approaches to feeding the world; 2) Protecting Bio diversity; 3) Understanding Earth’s varied and complex Ecosystems.

As a partner institution, the UConn’s Institute for Systems Genomics, Center for Genome Innovation, Computational Biology Core, and affiliated research teams will lend expertise in novel sequencing technologies, complex genome assembly, and genome annotation software development, sharing the collective goal of the project to complete genomes for biodiversity of non-human life on Earth.  We are excited to join the EBP community, coalescing global biodiversity and genomics expertise and providing an unprecedented opportunity to contribute to, and implement, standards for sequencing, assembly, and annotation for all eukaryotic life on earth.

For more on this initiative, see https://www.earthbiogenome.org/.