Mapping the DNA of all life in the British Isles
The Darwin Tree of Life project has a tough deadline - all 70,000 species sequenced by the end of 2030.
Seventy thousand species. That’s the best guess for the tally of life, including plants, animals and fungi, found in Britain and Ireland. And it’s the target of one of biology's most ambitious projects - scientists want to map the DNA of every single one of these organisms. Having these genomes - each a complete set of genetic information for a species - could transform how we understand the natural world. And there could be benefits for us too in the hunt for nature-inspired medicines and materials. The Darwin Tree of Life project has a tough deadline - all 70,000 species sequenced by the end of 2030. There is a lot of work to do, but this project could give us our most detailed understanding yet of the diversity of life. The ±«Óãtv's Science Editor, Rebecca Morelle, has been following the the scientists involved. For 5 Minutes On, she heads out with some of the scientists hunting for animals on the sea floor on Plymouth, and goes badger spotting in Oxford.
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