Tomas Marques-Bonet from the Institute of Evolutionary Biology in Spain spoke about the Org.one project at the Nanopore Community Meeting in 2021. The title of the session was “ORG.one: a new program to promote sequencing biodiversity.” They spoke about the mass extinction of species and the need to preserve biodiversity. Marques-Bonet explained how biodiversity genomics can help with understanding taxonomics and management strategies. They noted how decisions can be made with the sequencing of non-invasive samples. Marques-Bonet noted that there are several Global Initiatives. The Earth Biogenome Project is a major effort. They also shared a timeline of work done in Barcelona to rapidly generate high-quality genomes. Their computational pipeline takes between a week and ten days. They often do read quality control, assembly with Flye, and polishing. The contig N50 is between 30-50 Mb! The project aims to help communities generate a genome that can then be used and improved. The Spider Monkey and Celebes crested macaque examples highlighted how the genomes were used to conduct population studies. Some genomes, like the Montseny brook newt, are huge: 562 Gb! Marques-Bonet concluded by emphasizing the collaborative nature of Org.one and open access. This session included several examples of genomes and the community created through this initiative.
