REBP now unites more than 2,200 scientists across 88 countries, with growing participation from local and Indigenous research communities in the Global South. The consortium reports rapid gains in throughput and inclusion as it shifts from isolated, costly projects to a coordinated and scalable enterprise.
"As biodiversity loss gathers pace, so must our work," said senior author Prof Harris Lewin at Arizona State University, in the US. "Our growing digital 'genome ark' is shifting what's possible in genomics from isolated, expensive sequencing efforts to a global, scalable, and inclusive enterprise."
By the end of 2024, EBP-affiliated projects had published 1,667 genomes spanning more than 500 eukaryotic families. Researchers also deposited a further 1,798 genomes that meet EBP standards, bringing the total to 3,465. These resources are illuminating evolution, adaptation and chromosome change, and strengthening tools like environmental DNA surveys.
"We have laid the roots to build our digital 'tree of life' - and our early outputs are already reshaping what we know about evolution, ecosystem function, and biodiversity," said lead author Prof Mark Blaxter of the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
Entering Phase II, EBP targets 150,000 species sequenced within four years, covering half of all known genera, and collecting 300,000 samples to seed Phase III. Meeting this goal means producing 3,000 new genomes per month, aided by technologies that have made sequencing roughly eight times cheaper than just a few years ago.
"It's a biological moonshot in terms of the scale of ambition. As species vanish and ecosystems degrade, we aim to capture and preserve the biological blueprint of life on Earth for future generations," said Prof Blaxter. "Understanding the origins and evolution of life on Earth is a human pursuit equivalent to understanding the origins and evolution of the universe."
EBP will prioritize species vital to ecosystem health, food systems, conservation, pandemic control, and Indigenous peoples and local communities. To expand capacity in biodiversity-rich yet remote regions, the team proposes self-contained pop-up sequencing facilities housed in shipping containers, a 'genome lab in a box' or gBox.
"Chile is one of the world's biodiversity hotspots with many endemic species, but these are under threat," said co-author Prof Juliana Vianna of The Chilean 1000 Genomes Project at Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile. "In addition, our species are often studied only after samples are exported. With gBoxes, we can change that. Local teams can generate the data here, in context, and immediately connect it to the conservation and sustainable management challenges we face on the ground."
"Biodiversity scientists in low and lower middle-income countries confront daily the great irony of our species and our planet: that the lion's share of funding and infrastructure for genomics is located at higher latitudes while the great bulk of biodiversity is found in the tropics," said co-author Dr Andrew J Crawford of Universidad de los Andes in Colombia. "The gBox would allow any nation on the globe to make its own choices, empower the next generation of researchers in biotech and computational biology, and impact national economies by asking novel questions and developing creative solutions."
"The gBox isn't just a lab - it's a symbol of equity in science. By equipping local and Indigenous researchers with advanced genomic tools, we're empowering the Global South to contribute on equal footing to the Earth BioGenome Project. This shift ensures biodiversity science is inclusive, locally driven, and culturally informed," said co-author Prof Montserrat Corominas of Universitat de Barcelona.
Since launch, EBP has set international standards, grown an affiliated network, and hit many Phase I targets. Phase II is budgeted at $1.1 billion, including a $0.5 billion Foundational Impact Fund for training, infrastructure, and applied research in the Global South. Sequencing all 1.67 million named eukaryotic species in 10 years is estimated at $4.42 billion, which the authors call a very reasonable global investment.
Research Report:The Earth BioGenome Project Phase II: illuminating the eukaryotic tree of life
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