The Canadian Biogenome Project

That makes sense.

You know, we don't want to necessarily like try to take on 100,000 to start.

That feels crazy.

I love that we're like narrowing it down to those first 400, developing those protocols, developing how this is actually going to make sense.

But even doing that narrowing down process, how are you guys making these choices? Are we choosing ones that are like...

culturally relevant to different populations within Canada, like charismatic ones.

Like whenever people hear about Canada, they're like, oh, the Canada goose, or maybe not charismatic for the Canada goose, but the beaver.

We are doing the

Canada goose and we have done the beaver previously.

Yep.

Okay.

So we'll forgive the Canada goose for being scary, but we still love it.

It still is important to Canada.

But are we also thinking about ones that have like economic value, like an Atlantic cod, for instance?

So yeah, it's actually a bit of all of those things.

And there's really no one way to prioritize or select, you know, which species to sequence as part of phase one.

So the Earth Biogenome Project, you know, the global kind of umbrella initiative, they have several recommendations for species selection.

This includes permissions and availability to sample, community value, is it a publicly registered species, the physical size of the specimen.

genome size, taxonomic stability.

And then we at the CBP, or Canadian Biogenome Project, we also take into consideration factors such as if it's of conservation interest.

So if it's threatened or endangered, vulnerable in decline, managed by any sort of federal, provincial, territorial governing body.

Is it an invasive species? If it's found in the Arctic or the sub-Arctic, if it's affected by climate change, if it's an iconic or important or even keystone species that has a scientific interest or striking phenotype, any sort of indigenous significance or value, economic value, and even just availability of material to collect and availability of genomic resources for closely related species.

So we're not necessarily picking a species because they're cute, although the cuter species do tend to make for excellent presentation slides,

but

it's Yeah, a combination of all of these factors.

That makes sense.

You know, we don't want to necessarily like try to take on 100,000 to start.

That feels crazy.

I love that we're like narrowing it down to those first 400, developing those protocols, developing how this is actually going to make sense.

But even doing that narrowing down process, how are you guys making these choices? Are we choosing ones that are like...

culturally relevant to different populations within Canada, like charismatic ones.

Like whenever people hear about Canada, they're like, oh, the Canada goose, or maybe not charismatic for the Canada goose, but the beaver.

We are doing the

Canada goose and we have done the beaver previously.

Yep.

Okay.

So we'll forgive the Canada goose for being scary, but we still love it.

It still is important to Canada.

But are we also thinking about ones that have like economic value, like an Atlantic cod, for instance?

So yeah, it's actually a bit of all of those things.

And there's really no one way to prioritize or select, you know, which species to sequence as part of phase one.

So the Earth Biogenome Project, you know, the global kind of umbrella initiative, they have several recommendations for species selection.

This includes permissions and availability to sample, community value, is it a publicly registered species, the physical size of the specimen.

genome size, taxonomic stability.

And then we at the CBP, or Canadian Biogenome Project, we also take into consideration factors such as if it's of conservation interest.

So if it's threatened or endangered, vulnerable in decline, managed by any sort of federal, provincial, territorial governing body.

Is it an invasive species? If it's found in the Arctic or the sub-Arctic, if it's affected by climate change, if it's an iconic or important or even keystone species that has a scientific interest or striking phenotype, any sort of indigenous significance or value, economic value, and even just availability of material to collect and availability of genomic resources for closely related species.

So we're not necessarily picking a species because they're cute, although the cuter species do tend to make for excellent presentation slides,

but

it's Yeah, a combination of all of these factors.