Scientists from 33 European countries join forces to generate reference genomes for nearly a hundred European species

The power of (bio)diversity: some of the European species selected for the ERGA pilot project. Photos by ©Mantonature, ©Cucu Remus, ©dadalia, ©scubaluna, ©Kristian_Nilsson, ©AlbyDeTweede, ©Carine Carnier, ©Daniel Jara from Getty Images via Canva.com

To find out more about the article published in the journal "npj Biodiversity": Download the press release.

UNamur is part of this major European project whose ambition is to succeed in mapping European biodiversity. Thanks to the work of Professor Alice Dennisa member of the Environmental and Evolutionary Biology Research Unit. "By attempting to preserve the DNA of all European eukaryotes, ERGA will therefore be helping to considerably improve genome sequencing standards throughout Europe, in order to obtain reference genomes, i.e. of high quality."

More precisely, Alice Dennis is coordinating the committee responsible for annotating the harvested DNA. Annotation, a crucial and "soften neglected step. "My job is to determine which part of the DNA corresponds to what: such and such a sequence corresponds to a gene, such and such another is a regulatory sequence, etc., Alice Dennis details. "Unfortunately, it's a job that few people know how to do, partly due to the fact that there are few good tools to check the quality of your work."

ERGA is supported by Horizon Europe as part of the Biodiversity, Circular Economy and Environment program (REA.B.3, BGE 101059492).