By Emily Stangel, Collection Assistant Co-op and Dan Distel, Director of OGL
We are excited to announce that the Ocean Genome Legacy Center (OGL) has joined the Earth BioGenome Project (EBP)! A global network of more than 60 affiliated organizations and initiatives, EBP works to protect our planet’s precious biodiversity through genomic research. As an EBP affiliate, OGL will lend its knowledge, skills, and unique collections to this ambitious effort.
What is EBP?
EBP is an international collaboration working to generate high-quality reference genomes for all known eukaryotic species (animals, plants, fungi, and protists). By building a comprehensive genomic library for all multicellular life on Earth, this unprecedented effort aims to accelerate discovery across biology, medicine, agriculture, and environmental science.
This comprehensive, accessible eukaryotic genome library will serve as a foundational resource, empowering researchers to ask new questions, uncover the genetic basis of life’s complexity, and drive transformative solutions to the most urgent problems of our time, including climate change, food security, and biodiversity loss.
How does EBP’s mission relate to OGL’s?
Like OGL, EBP is driven by a bold vision: to enable researchers to generate high-quality reference genomes across the biodiversity of life and to reveal how species evolve, adapt, and survive in Earth’s ever-changing environments. Both projects are committed to linking high-quality genomic data to meticulously documented, publicly available reference specimens. Finally, both aim to deepen our understanding of biological diversity and to safeguard it for future generations.
Looking ahead…
OGL is honored to join with EBP and contribute our expertise in marine genomics, biological collections, and data management to this global effort. As new partners, both EBP and OGL aim to protect the world’s oceans—one of the last great frontiers of biodiversity discovery—by sequencing 150,000 eukaryotic genomes by the end of the decade.
Want to join us in this effort? Support OGL here.