Busy ‘bout the Tree of Life: genome sequencing of biodiversity

PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT IS A PARTNERSHIP LECTURE WITH THE UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH AND WILL BE HELD IN EDINBURGH.

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Biodiversity on our planet is under increasing threat, reflected in rising rates of extinction and collapse in census numbers of a wide range of species. This existential crisis comes at the same time as we are building understanding of biodiversity in exquisite detail.

Genome sequencing - deciphering the DNA blueprint of a species - is a fundamental tool in this work. The Wellcome Sanger Institute is famous for sequencing the human genome 25 years ago. Today we are turning the power of the Sanger’s genome sequencing power towards sequencing biodiversity: plants, animals, fungi and protists - “sequencing life for the future of life”.

We collaborate with museums, botanic gardens and many others to source specimens, which we process and sequence at Sanger, and we recently celebrated the public release of our three-thousandth genome sequence. These genomes reveal the biology of species in new ways, and we have uncovered some very surprising novelties in our journey to date.


Mark Blaxter leads the Sanger Institute’s Tree of Life programme, generating and analysing genome sequences from thousands of species across the tree of life, especially Britain and Ireland (the Darwin Tree of Life project). His research focuses on the interpretation of those genomes in ecological and evolutionary contexts. Before joining Sanger, he was Professor of Evolutionary Genomics in the University of Edinburgh. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 2014.

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