News The BioGenome Seminar is growing up. Rather unexpectedly, into a Network. 🧬 It started with a seminar, a few scientists, some fascinating projects and tools, and an impressive number of questions. But we soon realised that Europe has a remarkable collection of genomic expertise. We just don't always know where to find it, what's missing, or who needs what. So, we're expanding the format. Introducing the ERGA BioGenome Applications Network. The idea is basic (the execution, perhaps, slightly less so), we want to connect people, identify gaps in expertise and resources, share tools and knowledge, and help turn genomic data into something useful for biodiversity research and conservation. But before we start assembling the pieces, we need a map. And that's where you come in. We've prepared a survey to discover who's doing what, where expertise is available, what challenges researchers face, and which skills, workflows and training opportunities could make a difference. Whether you're a seasoned bioinformatician, a newcomer, or someone who has spent three days (weeks) trying to make a pipeline work, we'd love to hear from you. Because somewhere in Europe, someone might already have the answer to your question. We just need to find them! A little changing of the guard is coming to the ERGA Council this Monday, with a new Chair, two new Vice Chairs! The ERGA community is invited to join us as we welcome the new EB team and give a proper, slightly sentimental farewell to our departing colleagues, because every good chapter deserves a memorable ending and an exciting new beginning! 🧬 New SOPs for Field Sampling The SSP committee has released two new ERGA Standard Operating Procedures, openly available in the ERGA Workflowhub space. Amphibians: covers permits and animal welfare, field sampling, DNA and RNA preservation and biobanking, as well as photographs, metadata and sample traceability. 🔗 https://workflowhub.eu/sops/29 Salmonids: covers permits and ethics, planning the sampling, what to pack, handling and documenting the fish, which tissues to collect, preservation, metadata and traceability, and where the data should end up. It also includes a field checklist. 🔗 https://workflowhub.eu/sops/28 iBOL Europe, ERGA and CETAF Sign a Memorandum of Understanding at COP17 The three communities behind BGE+, iBOL Europe, ERGA and CETAF signed a Memorandum of Understanding during COP17, the UN Biodiversity Conference taking place in Yerevan, Armenia, from 19 to 30 October. The MoU sets out a roadmap towards a coordinated European research infrastructure for biodiversity genomics. By signing it at COP17, BGE+ also wants to highlight how digital sequence information (DSI) can help deliver the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. A BGE+ position paper identifies five areas that need further work: accessibility to technology, capacity building, quality control, standardisation and data interoperability. ERGA BioGenome Analysis & Applications Seminar: Museum Specimens and the Moss Carder Bee The October seminar took place on 26 October and is now available to rewatch. Professor Ian Barnes, Inez Januszczak and Dr Yacine Ben Chehida showed how museum specimens reveal a decline of about 25% in the genetic diversity of the moss carder bumblebee over the past century. ▶️ Watch the recording | More information 📅 Save the date: the next seminar takes place on November 27th - time and topic will be announced soon! Committee highlights Sample and Sample Processing (SSP): The manuscript on natural collections and how to access biological samples is finalised. The committee is now turning to sample processing, starting with a review of what the literature reports on wet-lab DNA and RNA processing metadata. A second review, on the metadata and data deposited alongside genomic studies, will be done in collaboration with the COST Action CONSENSA. SSP meets on the first Friday of each month and is open to everyone; simply contact samples@erga-biodiversity.eu if you would like to join. Congratulations also on the recent protocol publications, which are attracting impressive views and downloads! Sequencing and Assembly (SAC): Last month’s talk covered the Trivial Tangle Traverser (TTT), a tool for finishing telomere-to-telomere assemblies. Coming up: a talk on decontamination (removing non-host sequences), and a talk on the Universal Genome Note, tentatively in December. It automates the minimum information needed to understand how an assembly was produced, and should make writing a traditional genome report even easier. Work continues on assembly benchmarking within BGE+, and on a new assembly review process. IT & Infrastructure: Meetings resumed in October with plenty to discuss. Everyone is welcome to join if you like talking about platforms and data lineage, and listening to other EU initiatives. Please reach out to itinfra@erga-biodiversity.eu. 👋 Get involved Committee meetings continue in the coming weeks. To join, reach out via the committee emails listed here. Connecting Biodiversity Biobanks: New GGBN Paper in BioScience A new open-access paper in BioScience describes how our Associated Partner, the Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN), links biodiversity biobanks with infrastructures such as INSDC, BOLD, GBIF and DiSSCo, using shared standards and persistent identifiers. GGBN now has 121 member organisations in over 40 countries and gives access to more than 7 million biological material records. The paper also highlights how biobank collections supply the vouchers and samples that initiatives like ERGA, iBOL Europe and CETAF rely on. Events LRUA 2026 – Long-Read Sequencing Uppsala Uppsala, 2–4 November 2026 The annual long-read sequencing meeting from NGI and Clinical Genomics Uppsala, this year with a Biodiversity workshop and speakers including Evan Eichler, Rosa Fernández and Linnea Smeds. https://lrua.se/ BioHackathon 2026 9 - 13 November | Barcelona, Spain 5th BioHackathon Germany 7 - 12 December | Göttingen, Germany 2027 Student Conference on Conservation Science 30 March - 01 April| Cambridge, UK Vertebrate Genomes Project (VGP) In-Person Conference 2027 7 - 9 April | New York, US Featured conferences with sessions organized by ERGA members: Are you attending events or organizing sessions/workshops not listed here? Let us know here, we can help you reach more attendees from the biodiversity genomics community! Useful links HAVE ANYTHING TO SHARE? Click and Submit to ERGANews! Click here to become an ERGA Member Public EVENTS calendar here - add this to your Calendar or iCalendar! 💬 Follow us on social media! BlueSky LinkedIn YouTube

At this month’s ERGA Plenary meeting, Stefan Prost will present a talk titled “From Genomes to Conservation Policy.”Focusing on endangered cheetahs in Asia and Africa, he will share concrete examples of how genetic information is used to inform conservation and policy decisions, and how to generate meaningful, policy-focused genetic data. Abstract The generation of genomes has become easier over the last years. This has resulted in the publication of a large number of genomes, including those for endangered species. However, a single genome has limited conservation value, but can be the start of conservation focused research. In this presentation I will outline how we go from the generation of a reference genome to conservation policy. My talk will focus on endangered cheetahs in Asia and Africa, and provide concrete examples what genetic information can be and is used for policy and conservation management decision and how to generate meaningful, policy focussed genetic data. Speaker Stefan Prost is a tenure track Assistant Professor at the Ecology and Genetics Research Unit at the University of Oulu, Finland. His research group focuses on conservation and environmental genomics, biodiversity monitoring (in situ and environmental DNA) and wildlife forensics, with a special focus on conservation applications. He is a member of the IUCN working group to reassess the felid taxonomy, an observer member for the University of the Arctic in the Arctic Council Biodiversity Working Group (CAFF) and a scientific advisor for the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). In his research he applies trans- and interdisciplinary research methods to enable evidence-based conservation and to democratize genetic biodiversity monitoring. 🔔 To receive the Zoom link and join this and our upcoming plenary meetings, register as an ERGA member. ▶️ You can watch all previous ERGA Plenary talks here. If you would like to suggest a speaker or topic for a future plenary session, please contact us at training@erga-biodiversity.eu. Your input is very welcome!

This month's ERGA BioGenome Analysis & Applications Seminar will feature two talks that showcase how museum specimens are revealing a roughly 25% decline in the genetic diversity of the moss carder bumblebee over the past century, and how the new Poll-A-Gen project is scaling this approach up to 16 UK bee, wasp and hoverfly species, covering both sampling design and bioinformatic pipelines. This month's speakers are Professor Ian Barnes, Inez Januszczak and Dr. Yacine Ben Chehida. Monday, October 26th 2026 - 12:00 CET Livestream: https://youtube.com/live/zEfbvzScpnU?feature=share Abstract Talk 1: Using museum specimens to understand recent population history in the moss carder bee (Bombus muscorum) Talk 2: The Poll-A-Gen project; sampling Britain’s pollinators for population genomics research Insect pollinators are believed to be in decline across the UK, but we have little genetic baseline information against which to measure how far these declines have eroded their resilience to future change. In the first talk, we present whole-genome data from 101 museum specimens of the moss carder bumblebee (Bombus muscorum), collected between 1894 and 2019. These show that the species’ genetic diversity has fallen by about a quarter over the past century, and they also reveal that many historical specimens had been misidentified. We then introduce Poll-A-Gen, a NERC-funded project that is scaling this approach up to 16 bee, wasp and hoverfly species from the United Kingdom by pairing historical museum specimens with new material collected by recorders across the country. The second talk covers how this modern and historical sampling was designed and carried out, and the third covers the bioinformatic pipelines used to produce comparable genomic data from degraded and fresh samples. Speakers Professor Ian Barnes Merit Researcher, Science Group, Natural History Museum, UK. Professor Ian Barnes is a molecular evolutionary biologist who uses ancient DNA to understand how organisms respond to environmental change. He trained in archaeological science and molecular ecology, and held research posts at UCL and Oxford before taking up a faculty post at Royal Holloway. Having worked extensively on studies of Ice Age megafauna, such as woolly mammoths and sabretooth cats, as well as the extinct mammal fauna of the Caribbean, Barnes moved to the NHM in 2013. Subsequent work includes conducting genomic research on Britain’s ancient populations, including Cheddar Man. More recently, he has been working on reference genome generation as part of the Darwin Tree of Life project, and focusing his ancient DNA interests on historical entomological material, in particular insect pollinators. Inez Januszczak Project Coordinator, Science Group, Natural History Museum, UK. Inez Januszczak is a Biologist and Project Manager specializing in coordinating sample acquisition and genomic data generation for both modern and historical material, working across a wide range of eukaryotic species—including terrestrial and marine invertebrates, mammals, birds, reptiles, bryophytes, and algae. Since 2021, she has been based at the Natural History Museum, where she is the Project Coordinator for the Darwin Tree of Life Project and the Poll-A-Gen project. With a background in animal pathology and epidemiology, her experience spans over 10 years working with global institutions, including the Zoological Society of London and the Oceanogràfic Aquarium in Valencia. Inez holds a degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Oxford and a Master’s in Wild Animal Biology from the Royal Veterinary College. Dr Yacine Ben Chehida Bioinformatician, Science Group, Natural History Museum, UK. Yacine Ben Chehida is an evolutionary biologist and bioinformatician specializing in population genomics and the analysis of modern and historical DNA. His research explores the genomic basis of adaptation and speciation across a range of species, including insects and marine mammals. He is currently based at the Natural History Museum, where he works as the bioinformatician for the Poll-A-Gen project, contributing to the sequencing and genomic analysis of Britain’s pollinators. With a background in evolutionary genomics, his current work involves applying and developing computational approaches to compare the genome of museum and modern samples to investigate how their genetic variation changed over time.

Committees SSP - Sampling & Sample Processing samples@erga-biodiversity.eu More > DAC - Data Analysis Committee analysis@erga-biodiversity.eu More > CE - Community Engagement citizenscience@erga-biodiversity.eu More > SAC - Sequencing and Assembly Committee assembly@erga-biodiversity.eu More > ITIC - IT & Infrastructure Committee itinfra@erga-biodiversity.eu More > TKT - Training and Knowledge Transfer training@erga-biodiversity.eu More > Annotation Committee annotation@erga-biodiversity.eu More > ELSI - Ethical, Legal, and Social Issues elsi@erga-biodiversity.eu More > Social Justice Committee socialjustice@erga-biodiversity.eu More >

samples@erga-biodiversity.eu < Back SSP - Sampling & Sample Processing samples@erga-biodiversity.eu The Sampling and Sample Processing Committee (SSP) gathers and gives information on all steps from choosing which species to generate sequences for, to sending correctly prepared samples to sequencing centers. This also includes vouchering, biobanking and standardized metadata collection, as well as exchange on best practices for sampling and lab protocols for the whole variety of organisms that ERGA aims to include. This committee is thus often the first port of call for new sequencing projects within ERGA, and closely collaborates with scientific collections and sequencing centers, as well as several other ERGA committees, on issues such as collection permits and equal opportunities for projects from all over Europe. To accomplish these diverse tasks, we depend upon input from taxonomic experts on the whole eukaryotic tree of life. ( V.1.0 02.05.2023) Co-Chairs Katja Reichel Jaakko Pohjoismäki Coordinator Rita Monteiro Steering Committee Astrid Böhne Jennifer Leonard Olga Vinnere Pettersson Torsten Hugo Struck Committee Resources 💡 ERGA Knowledge Hub ▶️ ERGA SSP Youtube Playlist Böhne, A., Fernández, R., Leonard, J.A. et al. Contextualising samples: supporting reference genomes of European biodiversity through sample and associated metadata collection. npj biodivers 3 , 26 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44185-024-00053-7 ERGA News #41 - September 2026 ERGA Newsletter Starship transposons and a new framework to understand fungal evolution Events ERGA News #40 - August 2026 ERGA Newsletter

socialjustice@erga-biodiversity.eu < Back Social Justice Committee socialjustice@erga-biodiversity.eu The ERGA Social Justice Committee is dedicated to embedding justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion principles into every aspect of eukaryotic genome production, from sampling to results dissemination. This committee serves as an ethical compass for ERGA members, guiding the community to ensure that every step in the genome generation pipeline is conducted with social responsibility and respect for diversity in line with our four core principles: promoting diversity, ensuring equity, advancing inclusion and upholding justice. Through these principles, we aim to ensure both scientific rigor and social responsibility in our guidelines for generating high-quality reference genomes. (V1. 01/12/2025) Co-chairs Fabrizio Ghiselli James Fleming Head to the committee page >> ERGA News #41 - September 2026 ERGA Newsletter Starship transposons and a new framework to understand fungal evolution Events ERGA News #40 - August 2026 ERGA Newsletter