News

GGI and the NMNH Department of Invertebrate Zoology are collaborating with NOAA to collect samples from the southeast U.S. continental margin. Follow the two-part telepresence-enabled ocean exploration expedition from May 22 through July 2, 2018 as NOAA Ship Okeanos Explorer collects critical baseline information about unknown and poorly understood deepwater areas of the Southeastern United States,

Inspired by the May 22-25 Global Genome Biodiversity Network conference in Vienna, Austria, this article in Vienna’s local newspaper highlights the importance of initiatives like GGI and GGBN to preserve and make discoverable genetic samples for research, as an ever increasing number of species continue to become critically endangered or extinct and new laws and regulations restricting access to collecting new species are enforced.

See the original article in Vienna's newspaper derStandard.at

One of the planet's largest collections of DNA samples - a genetic Noah's ark held at the University of Guelph representing Canadian creatures from mites to whales - is now available to reseatchers through the GGBN Data Portal, adding roughly 1.5 million DNA extracts to GGBN's online collection, which not totals over 3.6 million records online.

Go behind the scenes and meet Dr. Eric Schuettpelz, a botanist who studies ferns at the National Museum of Natural History. Have you ever noticed how distinct ferns look and wondered why? Get a glimpse of the diversity of ferns in the Smithsonian's plant collection. Take a closer look with Eric at the unique aspects of fern life cycles. Figure out what having spores, but not seeds, means for a fern's fertility. Challenge yourself to better understand the unusual flexibility of fern reproduction.

The flora of the Hawaiian Islands is comprised of ~90% endemic specie, many of which are threatened or endangered. In 2016 the Global Genome Initiative funded a project, the goal of which was to collect genomic quality DNA samples of as many endemic plant species as possible from the Hawaiian Islands to aid in conservation strategies. The project specifically targeted the endemic plant species of the Compositae from the island of Hawaii as a preliminary effort with collections of other endemic taxa when visiting collecting sites.

The Global Genome Initiative Buck Fellowships are two-year fellowships that contribute specifically to the goals of the Global Genome Initiative (GGI) at the National Museum of Natural History and include a 60% time commitment to biodiversity genomic research and 40% commitment to other GGI related activities.  The fellowships are aimed at increasing the capacity for biodiversity genomics at the National Museum of Natural History.

With the rapid adoption of long-read sequencing and other technologies that require high molecular weight DNA input, there is rising demand for high-quality samples from biorepositories around the world. To accommodate this, scientists at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, developed and published a rapid, inexpensive method for quantifying DNA quality.

The GGBN-GGI Awards Program sponsored by the Global Genome Initiative provides funding in support of projects that promote the discoverability of new genetic collections through the Global Genome Biodiversity Network’s Data Portal (http://www.ggbn.org/ ).

Genome sequencing initiatives like the Arthropod i5k project and other biodiversity genomics research rely on access to high quality DNA and/or tissue. Global collection initiatives such as the Smithsonian Global Genome Initiative (GGI) and its partner network, the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) aim to provide access to these resources at high-quality standards. Here, we review progress toward providing genomic resources (tissues, DNA, genomes) for terrestrial arthropods, a megadiverse animal group, and compare progress in genome sequencing to all other animals....

Global Genome Biodiversity Network Conference 2018
Vienna, Austria
May 22-25, 2018