X Prize Foundation Encourages DNA Decoding

Carl Bialik from the WSJ writes "The X Prize Foundation, the group behind the $10 million prize for human space flight, 'plans to offer a $5 million to $20 million prize to the first team that completely decodes the DNA of 100 or more people in a matter of weeks, according to foundation officials and others involved,' the Wall Street Journal reports. 'Such speedy gene sequencing would represent a technology breakthrough for medical research. It could launch an era of "personal" genomics in which ordinary people can learn their complete DNA code for less than the cost of a wide-screen television.' But don't set aside that TV purchase just yet: Foundation officials don't expect the prize money to be claimed for five to 10 years."

Comments

Costs?

[I_Strahd]

Wouldn't it take more than the prize money to accomplish this task? If so, does this really give people incentive or am I missing something?

Thanks!

Re:Costs?

[Pyrowolf]

I think the technology that would come from this would easilly pay for itself regardless of the R&D costs. There would be an immediate need for this technology in various industries.

Re:Costs?

[BiggerBoat]

It cost Paul Allen (with Mojave Aerospace Ventures through Burt Rutan and his Scaled Composites) more to win the original X-Prize than the prize awarded him. They won $10 million, but reportedly spent more than $20 million.

For them, it wasn't (just) about the X-Prize and its money. That was just icing on the cake; the "real money" will probably come afterwards (we'll see how well Virgin Galactic does). I could very easily see the same thing happening with this new prize and the people who are already interested in such DNA decoding.

A whole new era of tire-kicking.

[TripMaster Monkey]

While there's no disputing that speedy, accurate genome sequencing will have a significant positive impact, being the pessimist I am, I can't help but dwell on the possible downsides:

• Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of insurance companies could make it difficult for a person with a genetic predisposition to disease to obtain health or life insurance.
  
• Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of corporations encourages said corporations to discriminate in their hiring practices on the basis of genetic predispositions to everything from coronary disease to psychological problems.
  
• Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of people searching for a spouse could lead to rigorous screenings of prospective mates for evidence of genetic 'undesirability'.
  
• Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of governments could lead to governments investigating citizens on the basis of 'questionable genetic heritage'.

Brave new world, indeed.

Re:A whole new era of tire-kicking.

[kfg]

Brave new world, indeed.

I have CF and Celiac. Trust me, it's the Old World, brother. You're just about to emigrate is all. Being stripped and deloused is just part of the deal.

KFG

Re:A whole new era of tire-kicking.

[RichDice]

Cheap and accurate gene sequencing in the hands of insurance companies could make it difficult for a person with a genetic predisposition to disease to obtain health or life insurance.

What you're describing here is the concept of adverse selection. It's an endemic problem in the insurance industry, but more generally is a phenominon of economics in the realm of information asymmetries.

This kind of genome sequencing technology would bring it into the foreground so that the whole American population would suddenly talk about and understand the concept, and perhaps do something about it, in the same way that high interest rates in the early 1980s had everyone suddenly talking about "time value of money" and "cap rates", terms previously only used and understood by economists and MBAs. (Of course, people seem to have forgotten these things since.)

I mention this because America currently practices a kind of strategy against adverse selection in health care by linking health care provisioning to employment through employer-provided health insurance. I'm not sure if this is why the system was set up initially (probably not, as economists didn't have a good theory regarding adverse selection until the 1970s) but the idea here is that if you're healthy enough to be employable, then you're probably healthy enough to be worth insuring from the perspective of the insurance companies. By being employed, you help level the information assymetry that you hold in your advantage over the insurers.

Of course, if everyone (insurers and would-be subscribers to insurance) held perfect knowledge, the whole industry would collapse. Insurers wouldn't bother insuring people who needed it, and the people who were super-healthy wouldn't bother buying insurance.

Other countries (e.g. Canada) solve this problem by making health care universal. It's quite egalitarian, which some people would consider a good thing. It's also very efficient, because now you don't have to put all kinds of resources into a system to check to see if people are good candidates for insurance. (You also don't have to have billing departments or big beefy accounting departments.)

If there's any kind of sanity in the US, this kind of technology will (finally) provide the political impetus for a real, substantial universal health care system there, too. Whether or not such a system develops can be used as a proxy to determine the hidden (or at least unobservable) information regarding the presense of sanity in the US.

Cheers,
Richard

Been there, done that

[LiquidCoooled]

Folks, make sure you obtain a large polythene sheet before "decoding" peoples DNA.

I tried it once and apart from a blood stained carpet, I'm serving 12 years for my trouble.

Oh, this is just GREAT news.

[oni]

I'm sure that the same companies who fire employees who dare to smoke on their own time would NEVER dream of sequencing the genes of employees and fire any who have a 2% change of heart desease. Oh no. That will never happen. And if it did, I'm sure that congress, who does not receive enormous donations from the companies, will pass laws that will protect us.

Sloppy language in TFA

[Daniel Dvorkin]

The usual problem with science reporting, particularly in biology. The article says "... the first team that completely decodes the DNA of 100 or more people ..." No; the prize winner will sequence the DNA. That is a looong way from "decoding" the human genome, or even the genomes of any particular 100 people. Sequence information is valuable, but it's not "decoded" in any meaningful sense of the word. Imagine looking at an enormous program written in a language you've just started learning, and full of function and variable names like "do_stuff()" and "x1".

Re:don't be so paranoid.

[oni]

One, I've never heard of any company firing someone who smokes. Could you provide a source.

Have you tried google?

If You Smoke, You're Fired

and

Bad habit is under fire from Daniels, U.S. firms

From the article:
Ohio is one of 21 states that allow companies to fire workers who smoke anywhere -- even at home.

You call me paranoid, but I bet that if, 10 years ago, I'd suggested that people would be fired for smoking in their own homes and on their own free time you would have called that paranoid too.

Just this morning...

[coastin]

while having my Wheaties, I poured the toasty goodies into a cereal bowl and out fell a cellophane wrapped prize. Wahoo, it was a secret DNA decoder ring... Yes, come to papa you lovely $10 million!

I just couldn't resist!

HapMap

[derniers]

the first draft of the human haplotype map (HapMap) is already done: http://www.hapmap.org/ for a short commentary see N Engl J Med. 2005 Oct 27;353(17):1766-8.

Re:Chances are these are moot points

[whovian]

Chances are with this level of technology, health concerns will start to be a moot point. Predisposed to being over weight or having cancer... Well why not just use gene therapy to fix that.

There are only a few successes of gene therapy. Getting the minute details of human physiology is hard. The results from mouse metabolism studies do not always carry over to humans. Researchers are make some progress on understanding the basis of obesity (i.e., leptin, ghrelin, etc.) that lies beyond the obvious "overeating makes you fat". Stay tuned.

Here's you sequence. And it's all been copyrighted

[Baby Duck]

In the ten years it takes to develop "turbo-sequencing", we will have find that very little of the sequence will now NOT be copyrighted by some corporation. So any possible research "cures for what ail ya" will be slowed down by having to take the time to bribe the copyright owner.