Darwin Tree of Life
The Darwin Tree of Life project aims to sequence the genomes of all 60,000 species of eukaryotic organisms in Britain and Ireland. It is a collaboration between biodiversity, genomics and analysis partners that hopes to transform the way we do biology, conservation and biotechnology. More...
Role of SAMS
Our Culture Collection of Algae and Protozoa (CCAP) is collaborating in the protist side of the project. CCAP is a uniquely diverse culture collection, holding over 2500 strains of protists including organisms belonging to most branches of the eukaryotic tree of life – not just photosynthetic algae but also ciliates, amoeba and other heterotrophs. The Collection is in a unique position to be able to provide the protozoan genomic DNA as it is the only depository for such strains in Europe and one of only two in the world.
CCAP’s role is to supply biomass from over 500 strains of algae and protozoa. The CCAP team will use their expertise to select the strains according to their taxonomy, grow them and harvest them following Standard Operating Procedures developed for the project. CCAP also provides the metadata associated to the strains and helps in the establishment of methods to grow and harvest the strains.
