The Global Genome Initiative — a component of the Smithsonian Institute for Biodiversity Genomics — is a collaborative science-based endeavor to collect the Earth's genomic biodiversity, preserve it in the world's biorepositories and make it available to researchers everywhere. The Global Genome Initiative aims to capture half of the world's genomic diversity within six years.
A genome is an organism's complete set of DNA. Each organism's genome contains all the information needed to build and maintain an organism. In essence, a genome is the blueprint of an organism.
Climate change and other human and natural threats to the environment make the Global Genome Initiative particularly urgent. Mitigation of these impacts requires more precise scientific results, more data and new tools. Today's scientists have an opportunity and a responsibility to generate and analyze big data in order to preserve and study genomic diversity.
Genomes are now key to basic scientific research and offer potential solutions to many pressing human challenges. The scientific community understands genomics at a level unimagined a decade ago and sequencing is the new core technology that advances evolutionary theory and ecological inquiry.
It is now possible through genomic sequencing to generate, analyze and share highly complex information quickly and economically on an increasingly industrial scale. However, commensurate technologies to obtain genomic samples in the field, curate collections and make them accessible to the research community lag behind and severely limit new knowledge. We believe a global effort is urgent.
Genome-level information will reveal the evolutionary relationships among all living things. The data collected will enable scientists to predict traits and properties of unknown or poorly known organisms, such as potential invasive species, unknown pathogens or sources of beneficial biotechnology and bioengineering. It also will allow them to foresee ecological and environmental trends.
Genomic science will revolutionize the fields of taxonomy, phylogeny, evolutionary biology, ecological research and monitoring, environmental change and health, conservation and wildlife management, invasive species management, agriculture, drug development, zoonotic disease forecasting, and aspects of national security and commerce.
To achieve its goal of capturing half of the world's genomic diversity, the Global Genome Initiative aims to have samples representing all the living families and half of the living genera (about 160,000-200,000 genera are known) from the tree of life in globally networked biorepositories within six years.
The tree of life refers to the universal genealogy or ancestry through which all species are related through evolution; it shows how genetic information is passed from evolutionary ancestors to living species today. For example, the tree of life shows that chimpanzees are the closest living relative to humans and shared a common ancestor millions of years ago. Species are at the very tips of the tree of life, and scientists generally theorize that all of today's living species share a common ancestor at the base of the tree. The Global Genome Initiative aims to capture the major branches from the tree of life, known scientifically as families and genera, to create a representative palette of the diversity of genomes present in living organisms today.
Biological diversity – or biodiversity – is the term given to the variety of life on Earth. It is the variety within and between all species of plants, animals and micro-organisms and the ecosystems within which they live and interact.
The genomic samples captured by Smithsonian scientists will be stored in the Smithsonian's biorepository located at the Museum Support Center in Suitland, Md. and made available to scientists around the globe through the Global Genome Biodiversity Network's data portal. Beyond the Smithsonian, the Global Genome Initiative and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network have and will continue to develop global partnerships and collaborations to sample genomes that are missing from the world's biorepositories and make them available to scientists throughout the world.
A biorepository is a publicly accessible curated collection of biological material. Examples include museums, herbaria, botanical gardens, biobanks, seedbanks and zoos.
The Global Genome Biodiversity Network is a global consortium of peer organizations supporting the collection, maintenance and sharing of research-quality genomic specimens across the globe. It seeks to bring together the world's leading collections of genome-quality samples of tissue and DNA representing Earth's biodiversity to help accelerate and optimize research agendas everywhere.
The Global Genome Initiative led the development of and hosts the secretariat of the Global Genome Biodiversity Network — a consortium of the world's major biorepositories and genomic research collections. As of June 2021, it has nearly 100 collaborating member institutions. The Global Genome Biodiversity Network will serve to accelerate and optimize research everywhere. Its goal is to achieve one federated database of the world's genomic resources—tissues and DNA—accessible to all stakeholders.
In 2018 GGI began incorporating taxa published in the Global Catalogue of Microorganisms (GCM) into our taxonomic progress. GCM is a database of micro-organismal collections made available by members of the World Federation for Culture Collections. GCM's focus on prokaryotes (and fungi) allows GGI (and GGBN) to focus their strengths on the remaining multicellular or eukaryotic organisms.
As of March 2021, genomic samples from 53% of families and 20% genera are discoverable through the GGBN data portal and/or the Global Catalogue of Microorganisms.
The Global Genome Initiative and the Global Genome Biodiversity Network has inventoried the families and genera that are currently represented in world's biorepositories and is focused on strategically collecting samples to fill gaps in genomic diversity.
To collect these targeted genomic samples, the Global Genome Initiative is driving collecting expeditions in three ways. First, the Global Genome Initiative is focusing on collecting from Smithsonian field sites (53 forest plots in 23 countries and four marine stations) through coordinated expeditions. Second, the Global Genome Initiative is developing partnerships with zoos and botanical gardens to sample and sequence their living collections. Third, Global Genome Initiative is working to develop and expand professional relationships with other research organizations through the National Museum of Natural History's scientific network to develop expeditions around the world to achieve specific and strategic outcomes.
