On Sept. 13, 2018, the Genome 10K (G10K) announced the launch of the international Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP), and its first release of 15 new, high-quality reference genomes for 14 species representing all five vertebrate classes – mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fishes.

These 15 genomes are the most complete versions of their species to date. The mission of the VGP is to sequence and assemble high quality, nearly error-free, and complete genomes of all 66,000 vertebrate species on Earth. The VGP data is currently being produced primarily by teams at three sequencing hubs: the Rockefeller University, USA, the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK, and at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. Two of the 15 released genomes, a bat and a fish, have been sequenced and assembled in Dresden.

With its ambitious mission the VGP aims to address fundamental questions in biology, conservation, and disease including identifying species most genetically at risk for extinction and preserving their genetic information for future generations. The high-quality VGP genomes will become the main references for their species and will be stored in the Genome Ark, a digital open-access library of genomes.

The current Phase 1 of the VGP – the VGP orders project – aims to create reference assemblies of selected species representing all 260 vertebrate orders that have diverged from each other shortly after the last mass extinction 66 million years ago.  Studying these ordinal level species will help scientists determine what type of species survived the previous extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs. Those studies can also give insights into how other species could survive the current 6th mass extinction event, help identify genetic variants that might protect these species from total extinction, and preserve biodiversity. Amongst the 15 new genomes are critically endangered species like the platypus, and the Kakapo parrot. Other species include the zebra finch songbird and the Anna’s hummingbird, which like parrots, belong to the only three vocal learning bird orders among over 40 orders of birds. Also, two vocal learning bat species are part of this first data release.

To conduct the VGP, the umbrella G10K organization, from which the project arose, has convened over 150 experts from academia, industry, and government, from 12 countries, to develop high-resolution sequencing methods that both reduce costs and eliminate the errors that plague current reference genomes. Many current reference genomes are riddled with errors—parts of genes are missing, some are incorrectly assembled, and other genes are completely missing. Consequently, researchers are potentially working with incorrect gene sequences and structures hampering their genomic studies. The new VGP genomes eliminate most of these errors.