(Nov. 13th, 2009) After the human genome project came to a successful conclusion, a new colossal sequencing project strives to get to the very heart of vertebrate evolution.
Vertebrate evolution has come a long way from tiny primitive fish, like Myllokunmingia and Haikouichthys that, with their some 525 million years, are, so far, the oldest vertebrate fossils ever found, to fascinating creatures such as the Blue Whale, the hummingbird or ourselves. The Genome 10K project aims at "unveiling this animal diversity" and, thereby, answering fundamental questions about molecular adaptive mechanisms. This should be achieved by whole-genome sequencing of not less than 16,203 vertebrate species, about 26% of all known vertebrate species alive today.
In a recently published proposal in the Journal of Heredity, the Genome 10K Community of Scientists, composed of representatives from major zoos, museums, research centres and universities from around the world, reveal how they plan to get the vast amount of work done in only a few years.
The first important step, determining candidate species and locating appropriate DNA samples in freezers all over the world, has already been undertaken at a meeting in April. Samples are available from the five vertebrate classes - mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish. With the exception of birds, all orders of each group are covered, also including endangered or recently extinct species.
The biggest challenge is, however, raising enough money for such an enormous project. Despite the fact that the new generation of sequencing technology has already brought the price tag down quite dramatically, for the project to be worth pursuing "only one more order of magnitude reduction in the cost of DNA sequencing" needs to be achieved. Furthermore, the massive bulk of data that is to be expected needs to be processed and analysed, something that will probably be hard to manage in the set time-frame.
Nevertheless, if the project is successful then we could be able to "observe the action of evolution directly at the genetic level" and the quest for the scientific basis of animal diversity will possibly have been completed or, at least, will have given us new ideas about our very origin or what our future might look like. After all, we are just fancy fish!
On a side note, sequencers of microbial genomes are already a length ahead; recently the 1,000th complete bacterial and archaeal genome was entered into the GenBank database.