ERGA News #41 - September 2026
News
Upcoming Seminar: Starship transposons & fungal evolution
The Data Analysis Committee is relaunching its seminar series in collaboration with the BGE+ BioGenome App Network. The first session will take place on 30 September and
focus on comparative genomics, featuring talks by Emile Gluck-Thaler and Aaron Vogan on the recently discovered Starship giant transposons and their implications for the study of fungal evolution and adaptation. See more details here.
Mark your calendars: seminars will now run every month, offering a regular space for the ERGA community to explore tools, methods, and applications in genomic data analysis.
ERGA Community Genomes: 55 Species and Counting
TThe ERGA Community Genomes spreadsheet now tracks 55 species from individual labs and collaborations across the community. This spreadsheet supplies information about ERGA community genome projects to the Genomes on a Tree (GoaT) platform. If you are working on a reference genome and haven't added your entry yet, reach out to request edit access: secretariat@erga-biodiversity.org
CONSENSA Consensus Standards for Applied Biodiversity Genomics Launching November 2026
The new CONSENSA COST Action officially launches in November 2026. Over the next four years, CONSENSA will work to harmonise methods for genome-wide genetic diversity analysis across the community, through 5 Working Groups covering protocols, metadata management, conservation applications, capacity building, and communication. Benefits for ERGA members include travel reimbursement for meetings and conference grants. You can apply to join a Working Group directly via the COST website and Management Committee recruitment from ERGA countries is still open; see the current list here (max. 2 per country).
Mollusc Genomics Workshop 2026
Another successful Mollusc Genomics Workshop took place in Frankfurt from 30 August – 3 September, organised by Julia Sigwart and Carola Greve. The workshop featured excellent research presentations alongside discussions on the ongoing challenges limiting the production of high-quality mollusc genomes, a taxonomic group that still lags behind others due to difficult DNA extraction and highly repetitive genome assemblies.
ERGA members interested in mollusc genomics are warmly invited to join future discussions on this topic! 🐌
Annotation Committee: Get Feedback on Your Annotations!
The Annotation Committee is inviting ERGA members to get involved! If you're working on a genome annotation and would like feedback, you're welcome to reach out to the committee. They're now incorporating this into the last 15 minutes of each monthly meeting, a great opportunity to discuss your work with the community.
The next Annotation committee meeting will happen on Tuesday October 13th - write to annotation@erga-biodiversity.eu to join!
BGE+ Cascade Funding: Country Readiness Update
The country readiness survey for the BGE+ cascade funding call has now been completed by 29 countries, helping shape calls that reflect the community's needs. Proposal development webinars will follow early next year. Details will be announced soon in upcoming ERGA plenaries and newsletters.
Highlighted publication: Bat1K Publishes in Nature 🦇
ERGA Associate Partner, the Bat1K project has published its first-phase results in Nature: 103 chromosome-level bat genomes, including 42 new ones, covering all 21 bat families. Together with fossil data, they yield a revised bat family tree and suggest that bats, and powered flight, originated in Europe in the late Palaeocene. Congratulations to the whole Bat1K consortium!
Events
Integrating Scales in Planetary Biology
Uppsala, 28–30 October 2026
From genomes to ecosystems: how does biology at every scale shape resilience on a changing planet? SciLifeLab's follow-up to the 2025 EMBO Lisbon workshop, with a dedicated Biodiversity Decline session and speakers including Anne Magurran, Arnau Sebé-Pedrós and Detlev Arendt. Abstracts by 7 September.
LRUA 2026 – Long-Read Sequencing Uppsala
Uppsala, 2–4 November 2026
The annual long-read sequencing meeting from NGI and Clinical Genomics Uppsala, this year with a Biodiversity workshop and speakers including Evan Eichler, Rosa Fernández and Linnea Smeds. The week after Planetary Biology – one trip, two meetings. Abstracts by 26 August.
Göttingen, Germany | 7 - 12 December
9-13 November | Barcelona, Spain
30 March - 01 April, 2027 | Cambridge, UK
October 15 | Barcelona, Spain
Featured conferences with sessions organized by ERGA members:
Are you attending events or organizing sessions/workshops not listed here? Let us know here, we can help you reach more attendees from the biodiversity genomics community!
From the #ERGABlog
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