About

Images adapted from (left to right): Randi Hausken (CC-BY-SA-2.0), NOAA’s National Ocean Service (CC-BY-2.0), Edoderoo (CC-BY-SA-4.0)

Biodiversity is increasingly threatened by human-related activities, directly and indirectly, which ultimately imperils both the global food supply and other biological resources that we depend upon. Therefore, understanding and preserving species and ecosystems are global imperatives for human survival and prosperity. Each organism and species on the planet has a unique "blueprint" encoded by its genome, i.e. its total DNA, which contains all the information that the species needs to survive, interact with its environment, and reproduce. Knowing and understanding the complete DNA sequence of all species of life on Earth will not only provide fundamental new insights into biology, biodiversity, and our ability to conserve life, but also deliver a comprehensive view of nature’s toolkit for future biotechnology to provide humanity with food, medical treatment, drugs, vaccines, biofuels, and biomaterials.

The Earth BioGenome Project (EBP) is a global non-profit initiative that aims to sequence and catalogue the genomes of all of Earth's 1.5 million currently described eukaryotic species over a period of ten years. EBP-Nor is the Norwegian initiative of EBP, and a partnership among the major universities in Norway (UiO, NMBU, UiB, NTNU, Uni Nord, and UiT), the research institute SINTEF, and the non-academic institutions REVOcean, The Life Science Cluster, and ArcticZymes Technologies. Together we will sequence and catalogue all eukaryotic species occurring in Norway, an estimated 45,000 species.

The white paper for the EBP-Nor project is available in english and norwegian.