Tis the (Bahinia flowering) season.
On behalf of the Bauhinia Genome team we’d like to thank you for all your generous support. We eventually raised $2,608 USD ($20,215 HKD), which makes our efforts one of the largest “community genome” projects to date. While those of you who have contributed will have recently seen an email from Indiegogo that the crowdfunding campaign is officially now over, the hard work is only just beginning. The Bauhinia Genome team are currently discussing with this amount of funding what on top of the “gene catalogue (transcriptome) should we start sequencing. We’ve been talking to the onekp (1000 plants initiative sequencing 1000 plant transcriptomes) to share protocols and make sure our data is compatible, and this will maximise the re-use potential of our open data. On top of aiding the global research community, this pilot data will provide training materials for student projects, and we have already experimented with our first school talks to kick start the start of the education phase (we’ll shortly post an update on how that went). From these grass roots beginnings, the researchers we are working with can highlight these pilot efforts to apply for research grants and larger sources of funding that will enable the project to build much higher quality gold-standard reference genomes, and more professional education resources. Watch this space for the results.
While it is coming up to the Lunar New Year in Hong Kong and beyond, it is also in the middle of the flowering season of these beautiful Bauhinia flowers, and the start of the Chinese new year also moves us to the when the flowering season for the parent species changes over. Look out for Bauhinia variegata starting to bloom and Bauhinia purpurea start to wane this month. Help us map these changes by using the #Bauhiniawatch hashtag on social media.
Happy New Years, and thanks from the Bauhinia Genome team!
We and others will continue to keep the interest and momentum going, and we’d like to thank all our supporters to date, especially:
Bastian Greshake, Liu Chi Man, Henry Hunter, Hallam Stevens, Olivia Rosenman, David Edmunds, Michelle Pardini, Amye Kenall, Nicole Nogoy, Fiona Nielsen, Denisa Kera, Green Glenn Austin, James Rodkey, David McKellar, Taras Oleksyk, Piya Muqit, Vincent Ng, Michael Bigelow, Terry Wong, Richard Smith Jnr, Hamish Stewart Low, Andrew Davidson, Holly Ganz, Fay-Wei Li, David Young, Laurie Goodman, Ellen Bergen, Jennifer Zarrilli, Thomas Lindsay, Kostas Repanas, Lachlan Coin, Jacob Thorne, Manimozhiyan Arumugam and the Hong Kong Skeptics.
We are currently gathering the Indiegogo perks together, so many of the above list should keep an eye out for something in their mailboxes soon.
Pics courtesy of Jerome Favre.