The JGI integrates the genomic capabilities of three partner institutions: Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology. The JGI’s workforce draws primarily from Berkeley Lab staff with several Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory staff distributed across groups at the Institute. The staff supported by JGI at HudsonAlpha are expert at the strategy of genome improvement (e.g., sequence gap closure) in Eukaryotic genomes (primarily plants). ETOP partners (see below) are selected for their ability to develop new highly-specialized capabilities that complement activities at the JGI and can be offered to the JGI user community in the near term (~2 years).