ERGA - The European Reference Genome Atlas

The European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) initiative is a pan-European scientific response to the current threat to biodiversity. Reference genomes provide the most comprehensive insight into the genetic basis of each species and are an important resource for understanding the functioning of biodiversity. ERGA aims to sequence the genomes of all European species and will establish an interdisciplinary workflow for this purpose. From species selection to data analysis, the process of creating reference genomes for all biodiversity will require a strong synergy between museums, research institutes, universities, sequencing centres, bioinformatics and computational groups.

Objectives:
- To create and consolidate a collaborative and interdisciplinary network of scientists from across Europe and associated countries
- To connect the relevant infrastructure across Europe according to a distributed model that can be dynamically expanded
- To disseminate guidelines for state-of-the-art genome construction through training and knowledge transfer

Scientists at the LIB are members of ERGA and the ZFMK/LIB is part of the BGE Biodiversity Genomics Europe consortium, a project consortium of ERGA and BIOSCAN. Astrid Böhne (Head of Section Comparative Vertebrate Genomics, ZFMK) is ERGA Council member for Germany.