The Biodiversity Genomics Europe project, which will be implemented with 32 partners from 20 countries, has officially launched. The project's main coordinator is the Naturalis Biodiversity Center in the Netherlands, a leading European scientific institution with one of the world's largest natural history collections and a focus on global biodiversity research and monitoring.
As part of the project, Poland was selected as a model country to develop a national initiative to create a DNA barcode reference library for local biodiversity (including a library of barcodes for valuable museum collections) and to implement methods based on DNA barcoding as a future standard for environmental biomonitoring, based on the national focal point of the international scientific network iBOL (International Barcode of Life) located at the University of Lodz. A DNA barcode is a DNA sequence in a selected standard region of the genome that allows species identification.
The main objective of the BGE project is to understand more fully the evolutionary and biogeographical processes shaping the richness of Europe's fauna and flora, as well as to create a uniform international standard for biomonitoring ecosystems and to develop a common strategy to prevent biodiversity loss.
Prof Grabowski represents Poland on the iBOL Scientific Committee. The scientific network, which will be established as part of the project, will aim to coordinate and facilitate the raising of funds for scientific research by various scientific institutions and will improve contacts and cooperation between scientists, NGOs and institutions responsible for nature monitoring and protection in Poland. It will also serve as an example for building similar initiatives in other European countries. Another important objective of the team from the UŁ will be to collaborate on the development of a reliable DNA barcode library for European freshwater fauna and selected groups of terrestrial fauna.
For more information, visit the Biodiversity Genomics Europe project website.