Consortium

The success of ATLASea depends on the implementation of a pipeline for the massive production of high-quality genomic data on marine species. It is therefore a large-scale version of processes already largely mastered by the programme’s partners. In this respect, the main challenge is to increase our capacity to achieve the desired throughput while controlling costs and quality. A second major challenge is to effectively articulate the main elements of the process that will enable us to sample living organisms in the sea to produce a digitised version of their genomes in computers. To meet these challenges, we have organised the ATLASea programme into three Targeted Projects (DIVE-Sea, SEQ-Sea, BYTE-Sea) which form the backbone of the data production pipeline.

ATLASea’s governance is structured around three committees that operate at different frequencies and levels of competence. At the highest level, the Steering Committee brings together representatives from CEA and CNRS, who will be steering the programme, and representatives from Ifremer, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (MNHN), Aix-Marseille Université (AMU), Université Paris Sciences Lettres (PSL) and Sorbonne Université (SU), as well as the two directors of PEPR. The latter will provide an activity report and take the committee’s advice on any major orientations for the programme. At an intermediate level, the Executive Committee brings together representatives of the research infrastructures and the scientific representatives of the institutions to review progress and resolve any bottlenecks. Finally, at the most practical level, the Coordination Committee brings together the Targeted Projects coordinators and the programme directors to take the decisions needed to move the targeted projects forward.

These committees will support the directors in their efforts to meet the main challenge facing ATLASea: building on the solid experience acquired by the partners in the field of sequencing and analysis of biodiversity genomes, the aim will be to build on this experience by maintaining a level of ‘benchmark’ quality in order to generate a highly reliable resource for the biology and biotechnologies of the future.

The ATLASea programme is part of an extremely favourable international context that represents an opportunity of strategic importance. It will be backed up by the European Reference Genome Atlas (ERGA) initiative, which is affiliated to the Earth Biogenome Project, and in which the two proposed directors are already heavily involved. It resonates with the European Sustainable Blue Economy Partnership for climate, and will be integrated with the European Union’s Blue Cloud and the United Nations’ Decade of the Oceans initiatives.

The exploratory research programme “ATLASea: Atlas of marine genomes” receive government funding managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) under the future investment plan “France 2030”.