[4] The initiative was inspired by Human Genome Project, and emerged during November 2015 meeting between Harris Lewin (UCD), Gene E. Robinson (IGB) and W. John Kress (Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History).
[3][5] In February 2017, at major conference on genomics and biodiversity organized by the Smithsonian Institution and BGI in Washington, D.C. was supported project's 10-year plan and organizational structure.
[1] It includes already ongoing projects such as i5K (insects),[6] B10K (birds), 10KP (plants),[7][8] and the Darwin Tree of Life, which aim to sequence the estimated 66,000 eukaryotic species in the United Kingdom.
[1] The project is aiming to sequence and annotate the roughly 1.5 million known eukaryotic species in three phases, with first to create "annotated chromosome-scale reference assemblies for at least one representative species of each of the ~9,000 eukaryotic taxonomic families".
[3][8] According to PNAS paper, several sequencing centers are supporting the project, including BGI (China), Baylor College of Medicine (USA), Wellcome Sanger Institute (UK), Rockefeller University (US), with an additional center to be established for the project in South America by São Paulo Research Foundation.