Harris Lewin is a prominent genome scientist currently spearheading one of biology’s most ambitious ‘moonshot’ goals, a complete DNA catalog of the genetic code for life on Earth by the end of this decade. He joins the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory and College of Global Futures as a research professor. Lewin leads the Earth BioGenome Project, a coalition of worldwide scientists and 50-plus ongoing projects that has a primary goal of completing, high-quality DNA reference genomes – the gold standard of an organism’s complete DNA genetic code and sequence – for all higher organisms on Earth, an estimated 1.8 million species.
To date, EBP has completed a pilot phase of about 2,000 genomes. Among the EBP are 55 genome projects underway, the largest led by the UK’s Wellcome Sanger Institute, the European Union, Genome Canada, China, a pan-African consortium and Australia. In the U.S., Rockefeller University leads the Vertebrate Genomes Project, which has now completed over 300 genomes and California Conservation Genomics Project, which has finished over 150 genomes.
With rapid advances in DNA sequencing technology and computing power, Lewin thinks the EBP can sequence the rest of all 1.8 million named eukaryotic species for around the same cost as the human genome draft within the next 10 years.
Lewin’s appointment in ASU’s Global Futures Laboratory boosts its comprehensive strategy to develop solutions for our world’s planetary systems challenges, including the current biodiversity crisis. There are an estimated two-thirds of higher organisms that may face the urgent threat of a new mass extinction, primarily due to the activities of humans that impact natural ecosystems and drive climate change.
The Earth BioGenome Project now joins ASU’s new School of Ocean Futures, NeoBio, Bermuda Institute of Ocean Science, Center for Global Discovery and Conservation Science, and Center for Biodiversity Outcomes as ASU’s academic lead initiatives to help solve the world biodiversity crisis.
Prior to ASU, Lewin served as distinguished professor of evolution and ecology and former vice chancellor for research at UC Davis. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and won the Wolf Prize in Agriculture for his research into cattle genomics. He has been a leader in the field of mammalian comparative genomics and has made major contributions to our understanding of chromosome evolution and its relationship to adaptation, speciation and the origins of cancers. Previously, Lewin worked at the University of Illinois for 27 years and, in 2003, served as the founding director of the Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.