We focus on the development and delivery of lab protocols, metadata standards and analysis pipelines to support the development of biodiversity genomic science.
Biodiversity Genomics Infrastructure
We are building tools and resources to support the effective exploitation of genomic data for understanding and conserving biodiversity
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Establishing robust standard operating procedures for generating genomic data from diverse plant and fungal tissue types at RBGE.
Plants and fungi are very heterogeneous - there is variation in their genome structure, such as base composition, as well as variation in the secondary compounds that plants and fungi use to protect themselves.
This variation means we need to test and optimise each step of our molecular protocols to make the best use of our samples. For example, we are optimising different extraction methods, with particular focus on high-molecular weight DNA extracts, as well as testing different commercially-available kits for genomic DNA library building.
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Supporting the large-scale production of reference genomes and barcodes as a global biodiversity genomics resource.
We have existing collaborative links with major UK and European initiatives:
- The Darwin Tree of Life project, which aims to sequence the genomes of 70,000 British and Irish eukaryotic species.
- Biodiversity Genomics Europe, a consortium established to accelerate the use of genomic data and science to tackle the ongoing biodiversity crisis.
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In-house development of lab methods to utilise the genomic resource housed within the RBGE herbarium.
Biological collections such as the RBGE Herbarium house expertly identified voucher specimens as well as type specimens, the ‘gold standards’ for use in identifying species.
Identifications are traditionally done using morphological characteristics of species, but DNA-based identifications are becoming more widely used.
We are developing the methods to utilise the herbarium collections for creating genetic reference data, which can then be used as the standard for DNA-based identifications.