The Richard Lounsbery Foundation has awarded OBIS a grant to develop new tools for integrating molecular and genomic data into OBIS.

• the development of a sequence lookup service that will compare sequences with known sequences of organisms in OBIS and provide back a list of records as well as a map showing the locations where these sequences have been found before. This will aid in the taxonomic assignment of sequences and support global spatial analyses.
• With new reference sequences generated over time, the sequences recorded in older datasets require routine reprocessing to see if new taxonomic matches can be found. This project will systematically reprocess the taxonomic assignments, and suggests updates to the taxonomy in the genomic datasets in OBIS.
• a brokering tool to map different data standards with the extended Darwin Core in OBIS. This will enable the network of data contributors to grow by lowering the barrier of entry, allowing source data to remain in their native forms while expressing them in a transparent and traceable manner for broader use on the OBIS network.