Biological diversity is being strongly affected by the rapid environmental changes of the Anthropocene. Our ability to identify species presents a major challenge for monitoring the impacts of these changes and for designing sound public policies in response. Molecular methods, such as DNA barcoding, metabarcoding, and environmental DNA (eDNA) offer promising solutions; however, the effectiveness of these approaches relies heavily on the completeness and reliability of DNA reference libraries.

To address this challenge, and as part of France’s national biodiversity strategy for 2030, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris (MNHN) and the French Biodiversity Agency (OFB) are developing the national reference of genetic sequences, called GenRef. This public and open-access tool will provide high-quality DNA sequences linked to reliable taxonomic identifications of species, and where available, to voucher specimens in biological collections, for taxa present in mainland France and its overseas territories (Lacoeuilhe et al. 2025).

GenRef will centralise, structure, and validate genetic reference sequences and their associated metadata using semi-automated workflows and expert review. Closely integrated with the France's national nomenclatural and taxonomic registry (TAXREF, Gargominy 2025), it will be interoperable with major international databases housing sequences such as European Nucleotide Archive (ENA), Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD), National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI GenBank), Unite (for fungal ITS sequences). In addition it will collaborate with French research institutions and natural history collections to incorporate their data and expertise, while promoting the acquisition of new data.

The GenRef workflow is organised into seven phases throughout which we can see the different stages of a GenRef Dataset.

Data acquisition: selection of taxon names in TAXREF (Gargominy 2025) and desired genetic marker(s), followed by automatic querying and retrieval of genetic sequences and associated metadata from major international genetic databases (e.g., ENA, BOLD, GenBank, Unite) via APIs. This step results in an initial dataset for GenRef (a working dataset for subsequenting processing, not a formal entity).

Ultimately, GenRef will provide access to sequences through a web-based user interface generating on-demand reference sequence libraries that can be used for different applications. These will range from the simple identification of individual specimens to surveillance of biological communities through eDNA analysis to support efforts in biodiversity knowledge, monitoring, research, conservation and policy making in France.