Pennsylvania State University A workshop at the Pennsylvania State University in early 2009 will assemble 30 experts from a variety of disciplines to plan for using advanced genome-analysis techniques to understand the genomic changes associated with species extinctions. The plan will also suggest how genomic methods may be used to save endangered species. Previously, it took millions of dollars, large consortia of scientist, and years of effort to sequence and analyze a vertebrate genome, and the only adequate rationale for such a large expense was a clear benefit to human health. However, with the current revolution in sequencing technology, the project to sequence a single human genome has led to sequencing 1000 human genomes, on the way to the promised $1000 genome. These same advances can be brought to bear on other problems of importance to society, and in particular, to ameliorate the current wholesale extinction of entire species of mammals and other vertebrates. A current paper (in the journal Nature, November 2008) reports the genome of the woolly mammoth, which was sequenced and analyzed by a small group on a low budget. That project shows the feasibility using so-called next-generation sequencing methods to determine the complete (nuclear) genome of extinct animals and to chart changes in population diversity that can accompany decline of a species. A current project is using whole-genome sequencing of several Tasmanian Devils (a species under extreme threat from a form of cancer), together with advanced genotyping technology, to help design a captive breeding program that can maintain a population diversity emphasizing genomic traits associated with resistance to tumors. The workshop will bring together (1) museum personnel, (2) conservation and wildlife managers, (3) experts in genome sequencing, analysis, and genotyping and (4) representative of public and private funding agencies. The workshop will be preceded by a day of talks, open to the public, by the workshop attendees; funds have been obtained from private sources to finance those talks. The next day and a half will be devoted to a closed workshop, where general discussions and break-out groups will yield a written plan detailing how advanced and soon-forthcoming genomic methods can be recruited to help understand, and perhaps even prevent, the processes behind extinction of species.
