The role of global collaboration
The hardest genomes are solved through collaboration. As biodiversity genomics expands across the Tree of Life, researchers increasingly rely on shared expertise, new technologies, and global partnerships. Together, these collaborations turn individual breakthroughs into methods that benefit thousands of species yet to be sequenced.
Bouabid Badaoui on a field visit to local goat systems in southern Morocco, discussing sampling strategies with breeders and team members. Community engagement and local expertise are central to the Africa BioGenome Project’s approach.
What has the EBP network enabled that would be difficult — or impossible — to achieve alone?
Bouabid Badaoui The Earth BioGenome Project has fundamentally changed what is possible by connecting expertise, infrastructure, and vision across continents.
In Africa, through the Africa BioGenome Project, we are working to generate genomic resources for species that are ecologically, economically, and culturally essential, yet historically underrepresented in global genomics efforts. Our work on camel and goat genomes in desert regions is a clear example: it combines local knowledge, field access, and emerging sequencing technologies.
Bouabid Badaoui interacting with camels during fieldwork in southern Morocco, illustrating the integration of traditional husbandry knowledge and scientific sampling in arid ecosystems.
This type of work cannot be done in isolation. It requires coordination between field teams, sequencing platforms, bioinformatics expertise, and international collaborators. The EBP network enables this integration, allowing us to move from isolated efforts to a coherent global strategy.
"Africa is not only a source of biodiversity — it is a driver of innovation in how we study and understand life in extreme environments."
More importantly, it ensures that Africa is not only a source of biodiversity but also a driver of innovation in how we study and understand life in extreme environments.
Have collaborations ever unlocked a genome that felt impossible to tackle within a single lab?
Have collaborations ever unlocked a genome that felt impossible to tackle within a single lab?
Kamil Jaron: In the past, any genome was impossible to tackle within a single lab simply because of resources and expertise was needed to make one, so collaboration was truly essential. Today, that bottleneck has shifted. Individual genomes are routinely generated within labs, but what still feels impossible without collaboration is producing high-quality genomes across thousands of species.
The scaled-up genome production we do at the Tree of Life programme depends heavily on collaboration — particularly for sample acquisition and sometimes for interpreting genomes we need taxonomic experts. In that sense, collaboration no longer unlocks individual genomes, but makes large-scale, systematic sequencing possible.
Kamil Jaron is a Group Leader in the Tree of Life Programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute. His research explores how reproduction shapes genome evolution, with a particular focus on flies (Diptera) and springtails (Collembola).
Mark Blaxter samples a teasel head for spiders and earwigs in the wetlands beside the Wellcome Sanger Institute.
Why invest in solving the hardest genomes at all — and what becomes possible when we do?
Mark Blaxter. It is important to realise that we are only at the beginning of the journey to the genome sequences of all life. While we have several thousand species sequenced, there are over a million still to do. Each genome is its own story, but a story and a solution that is likely applicable across many many more. The “hard genomes” often simply represent the first time we have approached a particular branch of the tree of eukaryotes: solving for one makes it likely that we can solve for all. Just 5 years ago, very few of us believed that reference genome sequencing at scale was possible- every genome was difficult, needing years of time and major investment. As we near the end of EBP Phase I, we have shown that sequencing at scale is possible, and embedding our successes in tens of centres worldwide will deliver the greater goal of sequencing all of life.
