Project to Decode Earth’s DNA Enters New Phase

(MENAFN) A groundbreaking worldwide initiative to document the genetic makeup of life on the planet is moving into its second stage, with the objective of decoding the DNA of 1.67 million species over the next ten years, researchers revealed on Monday.

The Earth BioGenome Project (EBGP), often referred to as biology’s equivalent of the Apollo moon mission, unites 2,200 scientists from 88 nations, according to a news agency.

First launched in 2020, the program’s mission is to create a comprehensive “digital bank of life” to safeguard biodiversity as species extinction accelerates.

With financial support totaling nearly $4 billion, the effort successfully sequenced the genomes of 3,500 species during its initial phase from 2020 to 2024.

The upcoming four-year stage aims to map the genetic material of 150,000 species, progressing at a pace of 3,000 genomes per month.

This will be enabled by technological improvements that have made sequencing ten times quicker and eight times less costly compared to five years ago.

“We’ve laid the groundwork for building our digital ‘tree of life,’ and our initial results are already reshaping what we know about evolution, ecosystem function, and biodiversity,” stated Mark Blaxter from the UK’s Wellcome Sanger Institute, the lead author of the research.

“As species disappear and ecosystems degrade, our goal is to capture and preserve the biological blueprint of life on Earth for future generations.”

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