
Darwin Tree of Life Project
About the Darwin Tree of Life Project
The Earth is experiencing the “sixth great extinction”, an event that threatens the biodiversity upon which human society depends. As part of global initiatives to use genomics to reveal and understand biodiversity, and thus contribute to conservation and mitigation of the effects of catastrophic change, the Sanger Institute has initiated the Tree of Life programme. The Darwin Tree of Life project is one of the programme’s key activities.
The Tree of Life programme is collaborating with the Natural History Museum London, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh, The Marine Biological Association, The Earlham Institute, The University of Oxford and its Wytham Woods field station, The University of Edinburgh, The University of Cambridge, EMBL-EBI and others to sequence to high quality the genomes of all eukaryotic species in Britain and Ireland.
Together we will collect and identify specimens, extract and sequence DNA and RNA, and assemble and annotate the genomes of the approximately 70,000 species with which we share these islands. We will make the data openly available for re-use in biological research, conservation, biotechnology and beyond.
The project is currently funded through the Sanger Institute core programme budget, and a major Wellcome Trust Discretionary Award to the DToL Partnership. The 30-month Phase I of Darwin project began in November 2019, and aims to sequence the first 2000 species, representing half of all the families of organisms present in these islands.
Mark Blaxter and Alex Twyford (University of Edinburgh) recently spoke to BioPod about the DToL partnership- a link to the episode can be found below:
BioPod (University of Edinburgh)- Darwin Tree of Life Episode
Suggest a species to be sequenced by the Darwin Tree of Life Project
https://tinyurl.com/dtol-suggest
The Darwin Tree of Life project will eventually sequence all described eukaryotic species in Britain and Ireland, but we’d like community input into which of these should be done first. A list of species for which sequencing is already underway can be explored at https://tolqc.cog.sanger.ac.uk/index.html. The form at https://tinyurl.com/dtol-suggest allows you to propose your priorities!
Thank you for participating.
Contact
If you need help or have any queries, please contact us using the details below.
Sanger people

Professor Mark Blaxter
Programme Lead for Tree of Life Programme and Senior Group Leader

Dr Mara Lawniczak
Senior Group Leader

Dr Richard Durbin
Associate Faculty

Dr Kerstin Howe
Head of Production Genomics

Dr Matt Berriman
Senior Group Leader

Dr Shane A. McCarthy
Tree of Life Assembly Team Lead
External partners and funders
External
BBSRC
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Connecting Science
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Earlham Institute
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The Natural History Museum, London
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Royal Botanic Gardens, Edinburgh
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Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
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University of Cambridge
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University of Edinburgh
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University of Oxford
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Wellcome
Associated research
Related groups
Affiliated Sites
External