The Story of Dogs
Dogs, descended from wolves, were the first animals to be domesticated by humans, some 40,000 years ago. New research, using modern DNA sequencing, is unravelling the evolutionary history of our canine companions.
Darwin Tree of Life in 2021: Tireless fieldwork and the first beautiful genomes
Teams have been collecting species across the UK - from the mountains of Scotland, to the sea caves of Wales, and the forests of Oxfordshire. Back in the labs we’ve been processing protists, extracting DNA, and assembling and publishing the first of our high-quality, reference genomes.
Marine medicines from the slimiest of worms
“They’re not cute or charismatic. They have toxic mucus. But I like nemerteans because no one is rooting for them – and we know so little about them.”
Genomics for all
In this guest post, Sadye Paez and Marcela Uliano-Silva explore what it takes to sequence the genomes of all life on Earth with the principles of justice, equity, diversity and inclusion.
Eimeria: the chicken parasite costing farmers billions
By sequencing the genome of this single-celled coccidian parasite, scientists hope to develop better vaccines to protect poultry from a disease that causes severe diarrhoea and death.
Darwin Tree of Life: Looking back on 2020
Despite restrictions, 2020 has been a busy year for the Darwin Tree of Life Project. We take a look at some of this year’s achievements and highlights.
‘These lowly organised creatures’: Earthworm sample collecting at the Sanger Institute
Few organisms have, as Darwin himself wrote, played such an important role in the history of the world.
Prising open the scallop genome
As part of the Sanger Institute’s 25 Genomes Project, the king scallop, Pecten maximus, had its genome sequenced.
Sequencing and the Tree of Life
Progress and promise of the Earth Biogenome Project - a mission to sequence all known eukaryotic species.
