Dataset Information

Earth BioGenome Project: Sequencing life for the future of life.

ABSTRACT: Increasing our understanding of Earth's biodiversity and responsibly stewarding its resources are among the most crucial scientific and social challenges of the new millennium. These challenges require fundamental new knowledge of the organization, evolution, functions, and interactions among millions of the planet's organisms. Herein, we present a perspective on the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a moonshot for biology that aims to sequence, catalog, and characterize the genomes of all of Earth's eukaryotic biodiversity over a period of 10 years. The outcomes of the EBP will inform a broad range of major issues facing humanity, such as the impact of climate change on biodiversity, the conservation of endangered species and ecosystems, and the preservation and enhancement of ecosystem services. We describe hurdles that the project faces, including data-sharing policies that ensure a permanent, freely available resource for future scientific discovery while respecting access and benefit sharing guidelines of the Nagoya Protocol. We also describe scientific and organizational challenges in executing such an ambitious project, and the structure proposed to achieve the project's goals. The far-reaching potential benefits of creating an open digital repository of genomic information for life on Earth can be realized only by a coordinated international effort.

SUBMITTER: Lewin HA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5924910 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Earth BioGenome Project: Sequencing life for the future of life.

Lewin Harris A HA Robinson Gene E GE Kress W John WJ Baker William J WJ Coddington Jonathan J Crandall Keith A KA Durbin Richard R Edwards Scott V SV Forest Félix F Gilbert M Thomas P MTP Goldstein Melissa M MM Grigoriev Igor V IV Hackett Kevin J KJ Haussler David D Jarvis Erich D ED Johnson Warren E WE Patrinos Aristides A Richards Stephen S Castilla-Rubio Juan Carlos JC van Sluys Marie-Anne MA Soltis Pamela S PS Xu Xun X Yang Huanming H Zhang Guojie G

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 20180401 17

Increasing our understanding of Earth's biodiversity and responsibly stewarding its resources are among the most crucial scientific and social challenges of the new millennium. These challenges require fundamental new knowledge of the organization, evolution, functions, and interactions among millions of the planet's organisms. Herein, we present a perspective on the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP), a moonshot for biology that aims to sequence, catalog, and characterize the genomes of all of Earth ...[more]

PMID: 29686065

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Project description:There is no generally accepted value for the lower temperature limit for life on Earth. We present empirical evidence that free-living microbial cells cooling in the presence of external ice will undergo freeze-induced desiccation and a glass transition (vitrification) at a temperature between -10°C and -26°C. In contrast to intracellular freezing, vitrification does not result in death and cells may survive very low temperatures once vitrified. The high internal viscosity following vitrification means that diffusion of oxygen and metabolites is slowed to such an extent that cellular metabolism ceases. The temperature range for intracellular vitrification makes this a process of fundamental ecological significance for free-living microbes. It is only where extracellular ice is not present that cells can continue to metabolise below these temperatures, and water droplets in clouds provide an important example of such a habitat. In multicellular organisms the cells are isolated from ice in the environment, and the major factor dictating how they respond to low temperature is the physical state of the extracellular fluid. Where this fluid freezes, then the cells will dehydrate and vitrify in a manner analogous to free-living microbes. Where the extracellular fluid undercools then cells can continue to metabolise, albeit slowly, to temperatures below the vitrification temperature of free-living microbes. Evidence suggests that these cells do also eventually vitrify, but at lower temperatures that may be below -50°C. Since cells must return to a fluid state to resume metabolism and complete their life cycle, and ice is almost universally present in environments at sub-zero temperatures, we propose that the vitrification temperature represents a general lower thermal limit to life on Earth, though its precise value differs between unicellular (typically above -20°C) and multicellular organisms (typically below -20°C). Few multicellular organisms can, however, complete their life cycle at temperatures below ?-2°C.

Dataset Information

Earth BioGenome Project: Sequencing life for the future of life.

Publications

Earth BioGenome Project: Sequencing life for the future of life.

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