Sanger Institute begins tardigrade genome sequencing — SkimNews
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- Prof Mark Blaxter's Tree of Life programme at the Wellcome Sanger Institute has sequenced 2,600 genomes — from whales to fungi, mostly British and Irish species — and now produces 48 per week, up from 18 in Blaxter's first 25 years of research.
- Witek Morek, a postdoctoral tardigrade expert at the Sanger Institute, collected moss and lichen on the Cambridgeshire campus, revived specimens by soaking samples in water, and identified a 350-micrometre "moss piglet" under a microscope for sequencing.
- Only four high-quality tardigrade genomes currently exist in public databases; Morek is closely working on 14 more, with roughly 50 species awaiting sequencing in the institute's -71C freezers.
- Blaxter links the tardigrade's superpowers — surviving desiccation, freezing (cryobiosis) and lack of oxygen (anoxybiosis) — to potential applications including dry vaccines and drought-resistant crops, contingent on identifying the underlying genes and proteins.
- The institute's "picogram input multimodal sequencing protocol" works on as little as 200 to 500 picograms of DNA — versus the old method that required pooling 1,000 tardigrades — enabling sequencing of rare or hard-to-find species.
Why it matters: Sanger's Tree of Life programme has compressed 25 years of work (18 genomes) into a weekly 48-genome output, now applying that capability to organisms that previously required pooling 1,000 specimens. With 50 tardigrade species awaiting sequencing and roughly 1,500 identified worldwide, Blaxter ties their desiccation and freezing resistance directly to dry vaccines and drought-resistant crops.
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