Bioplatforms Australia formed a strategic alliance with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation to bring together leading researchers from Australia and Saudi Arabia, to understand the genetic makeup of corals and how they might respond to climate change.

The Great Barrier Reef Framework Data Initiative or Sea-quence Project aims to bridge the knowledge gap around coral resilience and their capacity to adapt to environmental changes, which is key for reef management.

This consortium has generated an open access resource of coral and symbiodinium genome sequences, as well as associated microbial symbiont metagenomics data. The analysis methodologies are also publicly available, which enable faster, more efficient and cost effective analysis of coral genomes. This data resource will facilitate a series of hypothesis-driven research projects to be executed by members of the Reef Future Genomics 2020 (ReFuGe 2020 consortium)

Sequence data generated by this project includes:

• the world’s first whole coral organism, including the coral animal, symbiodinium (zooxanthellae), and associated microbes including bacteria and viruses
• a total of 9 coral host species
• 3 symbiodinium (zooxanthellae)
• coral-associated microbial symbionts

The Sea-quence project is the world’s largest coral genomics sequencing project. It is led by Dr David Bourne from the Australian Institute of Marine Science in partnership with James Cook University, the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, the University of Queensland, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, and the Australian National University. The project has also received support from the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, Rio Tinto and the Fitzgerald Family Foundation.

For further information, please visit the Bioplatforms Australia Metadata Portal: https://data.bioplatforms.com/organization/about/bpa-great-barrier-reef

For access to the assembled genomes, please go to: http://refuge2020.reefgenomics.org/
Please read the Disclaimer at the end of the page for more information.

Project contacts:

David Bourne | T: 07 4753 4139 | d.bourne@aims.gov.au
Petra Lundgren | T: 07 3252 7555| plundgren@barrierreef.org
Anna Fitzgerald | T: 02 9850 1174 | afitzgerald@bioplatforms.com

Genomics in Sea-quence