Human Genome Count Betting Period Extended

appleLaserWriter writes "Genomic Scientists still don't know how many genes are in the Human Genome. While they continue to sequence and analyze DNA data Dr. Ewan Birney has opened has opened a betting pool where scientists can submit their best guess. The pool has been extended for a further five years, so the information technology opportunities for genomics can only continue to grow."

Comments

Anyone read the article?

[Otter]

I was at the meeting in question and read the writeup here and wondered if a) I had completely hallucinated the event, b) the Times hadn't fired all its incompetent writers or c) the Slashdot submitter and editors hadn't bothered to read the story.

As expected, it's c. At the deadline, it's still unclear how many genes there are, but since there are far fewer, apparently, than anyone had guessed, the low bettors from each year were awarded the pot. The main winner (who noted in the NYT article that he had come up with his guess while drunk) headed back to the bar to blow his winnings on booze and was last seen stumbling off with some equally drunk woman. So don't say this was a pointless exercise.

Personally, it's not obvious to me that there won't be another 20k small RNAs discovered, but then I had a number in the 47,000 range...