Blaxter, Mark, Archibald, John M., Childers, Anna K., Coddington, Jonathan A., Crandall, Keith A., Di Palma, Federica, Durbin, Richard, Edwards, Scott V., Graves, Jennifer A.M., Hackett, Kevin J., Hall, Neil ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2808-0009, Jarvis, Erich D., Johnson, Rebecca N., Karlsson, Elinor K., Kress, W. John, Kuraku, Shigehiro, Lawniczak, Mara K.N., Lindblad-Toh, Kerstin, Lopez, Jose V., Moran, Nancy A., Robinson, Gene E., Ryder, Oliver A., Shapiro, Beth, Soltis, Pamela S., Warnow, Tandy, Zhang, Guojie and Lewin, Harris A.
(2022)
Why sequence all eukaryotes?
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 119 (4).
ISSN 0027-8424
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Abstract
Life on Earth has evolved from initial simplicity to the astounding complexity we experience today. Bacteria and archaea have largely excelled in metabolic diversification, but eukaryotes additionally display abundant morphological innovation. How have these innovations come about and what constraints are there on the origins of novelty and the continuing maintenance of biodiversity on Earth? The history of life and the code for the working parts of cells and systems are written in the genome. The Earth BioGenome Project has proposed that the genomes of all extant, named eukaryotes-about 2 million species-should be sequenced to high quality to produce a digital library of life on Earth, beginning with strategic phylogenetic, ecological, and high-impact priorities. Here we discuss why we should sequence all eukaryotic species, not just a representative few scattered across the many branches of the tree of life.We suggest that many questions of evolutionary and ecological significance will only be addressable when whole-genome data representing divergences at all of the branchings in the tree of life or all species in natural ecosystems are available. We envisage that a genomic tree of life will foster understanding of the ongoing processes of speciation, adaptation, and organismal dependencies within entire ecosystems. These explorations will resolve long-standing problems in phylogenetics, evolution, ecology, conservation, agriculture, bioindustry, and medicine.
Item Type: | Article |
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Additional Information: | Funding Information: This research was funded in whole, or in part, by Wellcome Trust Grants 206194 and 218328. Rights retention statement: For the purpose of open access, we have applied a CC BY public copyright license to any author-accepted manuscript version arising from this submission. |
Uncontrolled Keywords: | conservation,diversity,ecology,evolution,genome,general ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1000 |
Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Science > School of Biological Sciences Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences > Norwich Medical School |
Related URLs: | |
Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
Date Deposited: | 04 Nov 2022 18:30 |
Last Modified: | 29 Aug 2024 00:33 |
URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/89639 |
DOI: | 10.1073/pnas.2115636118 |
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