Tree of Life
3 July 2025Enter the absorbing world of sponges, the intricate animals that have evolved to inhabit all corners of our Earth’s waterways and oceans. Thanks to a worldwide collaboration of sponge scientists through the Aquatic Symbiosis Genomics project, which is led by the Wellcome Sanger Institute, more than 50 published high-quality sponge genomes and counting are now freely accessible to the research community.
20 December 20216.9 min readDogs, 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 readTeams 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.
18 October 20216.2 min read“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.”
28 September 20215.6 min readIn 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.
23 September 20214.6 min readBy 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.
18 December 202012.4 min readDespite 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.
