This is going to be one huge
scientific project:
It took a decade and nearly $3 billion to completely sequence the human genome. Now researchers at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History are helping to tackle Earth's remaining 1.3 million species through the Global Genome Initiative.
The plan is to eventually freeze embryos, seeds, and other genetic samples from as many of Earth's life-forms as possible. The project will make use of the Smithsonian Institute's biorepository, a 6,500-square-foot, $9 million storage facility that has space for more than 4.2 million tiny vials of cryogenically frozen tissue samples.
Smithsonian officials say they'll be working with other organizations to complete the work:
The museum won't be starting from scratch: It already has more than 127 million objects, many of them in the biological sciences, in its collection. And many of those tissues can be sequenced.
The Smithsonian will also share resources with the British Natural History Museum and other biorepositories worldwide. Other leaders in the field of genetic analysis are the San Diego Zoo, which has an extensive database of animal genomes, a "seed bank," and a "frozen zoo" of cell cultures from more than 9,000 animals; the University of California, Santa Cruz, with the world's most extensive online database of genomes; and the U.S. Department of Energy, with an online database of current genome research.
If the Smithsonian itself doesn't have a particular sample in its repository, the Global Genome Initiative hopes to serve as a clearinghouse of sorts between repositories like the San Diego Zoo and scientists who want to do genetic research on those institutions' samples.
What do they hope to get out of it? Aside from expanding our general knowledge of our environment, they believe there is a possibility of finding cures for diseases and even reversing extinction.