Comparative Genomics in the Era of Biodiversity Sequencing

Recent technological advances now make it possible to sequence entire eukaryote genomes to “reference” level, where all chromosomes are assembled to high quality standards. This has motivated ambitious programmes worldwide to sequence one genome for each eukaryote species on Earth. Results should help us understand how life has evolved and is organised in the Tree of Life and serve as foundation to investigate numerous new questions in Biology and Ecology. I will present our efforts to contribute to this endeavour through the ATLASea programme, which aims at sequencing 4,500 marine eukaryote genomes in the French marine area. In a second part, I will present two examples of how such programmes can motivate very large scale comparative genomics analyses and what we can learn from them.