Huge plan to map the DNA of all life in British Isles

Image source, Tony Jolliffe

There are seventy thousand species

That is the best guess for the total of life in Britain and Ireland.

One of biology's most ambitious projects is to map the genes of all the organisms.

The genomes could change how we understand the natural world. In the hunt for nature inspired medicines and materials, there could be benefits for us as well.

The beginning of the task is thick, sticky mud inPlymouth.

The deck of the research vessel that belongs to the Marine Biological Association is being used as a dumping ground.

A host of wriggling creatures were revealed when it was placed in a sieve.

Bivalves are related to clams and mussels. The shell of the gastropods is similar to the shell of a garden snail. Some brittle stars are present. A lot of different types of animals is great.

He's focusing on the marine worms known as polychaetes today.

Some look like worms and others are covered in bristles. The strangest animal is the mud owl. It looks like the face of an owl until it extends a proboscis.

All of them will have their genomes taken for the project.

Patrick says that it's a large task with hundreds and hundreds of species.

Over 100 species of polychaetes have been collected, but it is just the beginning.

Every type of habitat is covered in the research.

The focus is on the woods in Oxford.

A group of badgers emerge from their enclosure. They hunted for snacks in the dark.

The animals in Wytham Woods have been studied in detail for more than 30 years, but now their genomes have been mapped.

According to the University of Oxford, the genome can answer many questions.

Why the badger is different from other animals is something we can investigate.

When badgers mate and an egg is fertilised, the process of pregnancies is put on hold until the best time of year to have a baby.

It will be possible to understand why badgers are more susceptible to Tuberculosis than other animals if we have a genomes.

There is a project at the center of Cambridge.

There are samples from all over the British Isles.

The material is weighed, frozen with liquid nitrogen, and then pulverised into a fine powder. The genomes can be taken from this.

The human genome project took a long time to complete. A few days is how long it will take to sequence a species.

The way we do human biology has changed because of the human genome. It has changed how we view ourselves and how we deal with illness.

We would like to make that possible for all of biology. We want everyone to be able to work on any group of species, anywhere in the world.

The genetic work should show how species relate to each other and how they differ.

Mark said it was filling up the library of life.

The smallest life forms are facing the greatest challenges.

A man is looking through a microscope at a drop of water. Protists are single-celled organisms.

Two small green cells are here, they're both microalgae. He says they're similar to plants.

It is difficult to sequence the smallest organisms for the project.

Some of them look very similar. They're not easy to sequence because they're starting off with very small amounts of genetic material.

Without single-celled organisms, we wouldn't exist.

Jamie says that they rely on them to survive.

Protists eat organisms that are smaller than them in the food chain. They are eaten by bigger organisms.

Half of the planet's oxygen supply is produced by protists.

It's important to be able to identify them. They don't understand their biodiversity very well. They're so important that we need to protect them.

The marine biologists have moved to the other side of the country to check out some rock pools.

There is a lot of species in each one.

There is something near the seaweed.

Kes Scott-Somme is a research assistant on the Darwin Tree of Life. It is a stretched-out seahorse. They are very well adapted to their environment. It's possible to live high on the shore.

It will not only help us to understand the species, but it will also help us.

The animals that live here have to be even more adapted to their environment than we are. Kes said that they have specific ways of dealing with their environment.

We could use this to find things like antibiotics. The marine environment is a good place to look for information.

The Darwin Tree of Life project has a hard deadline.

There is a lot of work to be done, but this project could give us a better idea of the diversity of life.

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Alison Francis is a journalist.