Tree of Life

  • 29 April 202510.6 min read

    Intergenerational insect investigators

    We explore how the Barcoding for Beginners programme and BIOSCAN project are using genetic tools to investigate insect diversity across the UK.

  • 31 May 20220 min read

    Completing the puzzle of life on earth

    Behind the scenes of Sanger's Tree of Life programme

  • 28 March 20225.4 min read

    Barcoding creatures and building confidence

    Meet Leia Zhao, a research assistant working in the Evolutionary Genomics group in the Tree of Life Programme.

  • 8 March 20226.4 min read

    Making your voice heard

    Evolutionary genomics, creepy crawlies and being a woman in science

  • 16 February 20228.3 min read

    The diversity of plants

    We spoke to some of the team planning to sequence the DNA of every plant species in Britain and Ireland about the diversity of plant genomes and the importance of plant science in the face of global challenges.

  • 20 December 20216.9 min read

    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.

  • 16 December 202114.1 min read

    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.