Reference genomes for conservation Science

As of 2022, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List estimates that more than 32% of fungal, plant, and animal species are threatened with extinction. This sixth mass extinction is caused by the activities and expanding biomass of humans, necessitating a distinct name for this geological epoch—the Anthropocene (1). Human population growth and the vertebrate extinction rate (2) have been linearly correlated over the past 500 years (see the figure). For some species of conservation concern, documenting, informing, and mitigating this biodiversity loss has been helped by powerful genomic tools, including a reference assembly (3). Yet, currently, only a small fraction (<1%) of the ∼35,500 species assessed as threatened with extinction have an available genome assembly, and to date, most are in draft form. It is proposed that conservation efforts can be enhanced by the production of high-quality reference genome assemblies.