Vertebrate Genomes Project Releases First Assemblies; Describes Challenges, Plans
GenomeWeb | Sep 13, 2018 | Julia Karow
NEW YORK – The Vertebrate Genomes Project, an international effort under the auspices of the Genome 10K consortium, today publicly released its first 15 high-quality reference genome assemblies, representing all five vertebrate classes, which serve as a proof of principle for the project’s ultimate goal to generate similar assemblies for all 66,000 vertebrate species on Earth.
Insights gained from these genomes could help with species conservation efforts, functional studies of the genetics underlying vertebrate traits and diseases, and phylogenomic analyses, according to the organizers.
At the Genome 10K annual conference yesterday at Rockefeller University, project coordinators and participants provided an update on the VGP’s status, and discussed challenges encountered, such as obtaining permits for samples, extracting ultra-high molecular weight DNA, and speeding up genome assembly and annotation processes.
Earlier this year at the Plant and Animal Genome conference, VGP investigators provided a first outline of the project. The VGP plans to proceed in four phases: the first phase, to be completed by the end of 2020, will encompass about 260 species across vertebrate orders; the second phase will cover all 1,000 or so vertebrate families; the third phase will expand to the roughly 10,000 vertebrate genera; and the fourth and last phase will cover all 66,000 or so vertebrate species. The estimated cost for the entire project is about $600 million, of which a fraction has been raised to date.
The project is closely coordinating with a number of genome sequencing initiatives that have some overlap, including the Bird 10,000 Genomes (B10K) project, the Bat 1K initiative, and the Earth Biogenome Project.