The 2018 edition of the World Economic Forum commenced on 23rd of January. For those of who don’t know what the World Economic Forum is, it is a Swiss nonprofit foundation, founded by German engineer and economist Klaus Schwab in 1971 with the motto “Committed to improving the state of the world”.
As a person who is interested in the future, this 3 day event is of great interest to me. So while browsing through the World Economic Forum YouTube channel, where they upload the discussion sessions and presentations, I found out that there are 100+ videos of the 2018 WEF Summit, and most of them are an hour long or more. So there are nearly 150+ hours of video content out there. Since watching all of it wouldn’t be possible, I decided to find some interesting ones. One of the presentations that grabbed my attention was about sequencing the DNA of all the eukaryotic life forms on this planet. This is what this article is going to be all about.
Launched in 1990, the Human Genome Project was a , collaborative research program whose goal was the complete mapping and understanding of all the genes of human beings. Francis Collins, the director of National Human Genome Research Institute, said that the genome could be thought of in terms of a book with multiple uses: “It’s a history book — a narrative of the journey of our species through time. It’s a shop manual, with an incredibly detailed blueprint for building every human cell. And it’s a transformative textbook of medicine, with insights that will give health care providers immense new powers to treat, prevent and cure disease.” The $3 billion dollars that was invested in the Human Genome project added $ 1 trillion dollar to the US economy, according to a report by Battelle Memorial Institute.
All these advancements in biology and economical benefits have come from the sequencing of the DNA of just one organism. What if the DNA of all the eukaryotes in this planet were sequenced? It is estimated 15- 20 million species live on this planet of which only 1.5 to 2 million are known. As of now, the DNA. of only 2500 species has been completely sequenced.
The aim of the Earth Biogenome project is to sequence the DNA of all eukaryotic life over a 10 year period. It is 3 primary objectives. First, benefiting human welfare. Second, protecting biodiversity. And third, understanding ecosystems. By understanding the relationship between different lifeforms, we can improve our understanding of the the ecosystem, ecology and evolution.
To make this project a reality, new technologies will be required, like portable sequencers. As Professor Harris Lewin said in the presentation “Rather than bringing the sample to the lab, we need to bring the sequencer to the sample”. Automated drone technology will be required to identify and collect samples from the field.
Apart from there technologies, new algorithms will be required to analyze the large amount of data that will be collected during the process. It is estimated that the Earth Biogenome Project will produce around one Exabyte of data.The grand goal of this project is, according to Professor Harris Lewin “to create a digital repository of life reflecting the wisdom of 3.5 billion years of evolution of life in this planet”.
Professor Lewin stated that this project is technologicaly feasible and can be done at a cost of around $4.7 billion dollars. And the project has already started, with institutes such as University of California, Davis , Rockefeller University and Smithsonian institution starting various projects and initiatives to sequence the DNA of various organisms.
Professor Lewin also announced the partnership between the Earth BioGenome Project and the Earth Bank of Codes. Basically, the Earth Bank of Codes will make this biological data which will be produced by the Earth BioGenome Project available to bio-innovators around the world. They will start their first project in the Amazon Basin, where the aim to sequence the DNA of all the species inhabiting the habitat.
This project has really grabbed my attention and I hope that they succeed. The only thing I worry about is how the economic benefits will be shared with the local inhabitants and people who are working towards maintaining those biomes where these species live. In the part 2 of this article I will dive deep into the Earth Bank of Codes, which focuses on these issues.
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REFERENCES :
1. hQhttps://youtu.be/zRTgunqy4hQ
2. https://www.nature.com/news/economic-return-from-human-genome-project-grows-1.13187
