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X-Prize to Award $10M for Fast Sequencing
Shipud writes "The X-Prize foundation has announced the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics — for the first privately financed group to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days. The motivation is to create an incentive for faster, cheaper genome seqeunceing, heralding the era of preventative personalized medicine. The winner will also receive an extra $1,000,000 for sequencing the genomes of 100 additional people; among them Larry King and Stephen Hawking. Apparently this is the largest medical prize in history."
X-prize for first post!
lemonade was a popular drink and it still is
This was already covered by /. http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/151323 6 9 days ago.
keeps us all certain that the "editors" don't actually read slashdot.
How we know is more important than what we know.
In China, they have the same competition. But then you win and they send the bill to your family.
Onda Technology Institute
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/151323 6
I, for one, don't welcome our fabulous editing underlords.
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Gattaca
When his defense asked, "Which computer has Jon Johansen trespassed upon?" the answer was: "His own."
So for your first 100 people you get $10 M. That's $100 K per person. Then you only get $10 K after that--and for sequencing the genes of people who have the greatest capacity to pay? Doesn't really seem to be worth the effort after the first hundred. I mean, isn't it worth at least $10,000 to those extra 100 people who would have their genes sequenced and possibly have great medical benefits because of that.
The biggest prize in medical history... Why is it the biggest? Cause for the last decades, new medicine means BIG business. I wonder how good that is. My view is kinda biased. My roommate's in biotech. Seeing first hand his ethics and beliefs as a scientist, I am really reluctant in handing my future to scientists like him...
Stephen Hawking I can understand but why is Larry King included. What makes him worthy of having his genomes sequenced.
here : http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/04/151323 6
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
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All of this fucking harcore science for DMCA.
Woo!
In short:
An intresting detail:
Note that Human Genome Project mapped and sequenced only some 3Gbp. And that was considered to be whole genome. Basically X-Price want winner to sequence all 46 cromosomes. This sounds quite difficult as the method have to be sure that is has sequenced both of the cromosomes (from a pair), not just the other one twice. And this must be valid all the 3Gbp. By bet? The working method just sequences emultiple chromosomes and determines the exact basepairs statically.
Should have been "Darwin Award", but that was taken already...
In modern America, researchers search for cures to genetic disease in Soviet Russia, the party cures your genetic defect called life...by sending you to the gulag for "research"
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
I've been browsing the site now for some time and haven't found a single shread of evidence for this "extra price". I call bullshit. It's just a joke to mock the slashdot "editors".
So we don't repeat him.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
My cash is on CodonDevices. George Church has an incredible new sequencing technology, and he's making it open source. I know some of the peeps there writing software, and between the tech and the IT team, they'll be able to generate and handle the data - the big sequencing companies ought to be scared...
Well, I usually hate to repeat myself but:
And, now - give me the next 100. No probs! Next one, please.
Genes are your Destiny.
Too bad the sequencing research these days is not so much focusing on fast sequencing (though that is of course still a major concern), as it is on accurate sequencing. One of the problems bio-folk are encountering is that the human genome is relatively easy to sequence: you can get all your DNA from one individual (so you only need to worry about getting two unique DNA sequences getting mixed up in the final result, one from the male and female parents) and there isn't as much repetition as compared to say, mosquito genomes. Further, when studying things like mosquitos, the shotgunning techniques currently need to use DNA from whole portions of a population, say 50 or more individuals (AFAIK), so your final result doesn't really represent any one member; a lot of useful information is lost this way.
Anyway, just my semi-educated two cents. I'm CS, so what do I know? Well, I'm told it's NP hard, so... good luck with getting that 10 Mil and still having an accurate result.
The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
You mean government doesn't have to fund all research by forcibly taking money from its citizens?
Slashdot only has one day left to dupe this another 98 times if they hope to claim the prize...
TFA? Whats that?
any true revolutions at a company or other entity that allows this level of an improvement over current sequencing tech will have so much VC money (or parent company cash) rolling in that $10 million won't even be worth the time for application. Then when the tech is validated and ready for use, they wouldn't have time to cash the check for $10 million while the billions are rolling in.
For those of you in other fields, imagine in the next jet propulsion X prize was $10 million to the first group to come up with a working drive capable of 20% of the speed of light within a day of ignition. Or how about a single computer CPU capable of processing 100 peta flops. Or a system capable of cracking a gallon of water but using only 100 joules of electricity.
Sure, some day these may all be possible, but right now they are pie in the sky at best.
They'll try to make a super baby from the 100 people and it'll get the brains of Larry King and ALS from Hawking..
Reminds me of a George Bernard Shaw quote (mis-attributed sometimes to Einstein I think). When it was suggested to him by a beautiful woman that they could make super-babies together, he replied:
"But what if they had my looks and your brains?
This was already covered, but new news I found about the X Prize Cup got rejected yesterday. :(
Isn't a discussion about the new events at this year's exhibition worthwhile? Oh well.
http://www.xprizecup.com/
With regards to this post, and the following post about 98 % coverage.
The quality (i.e. the error rate) must be 0.01%, which is the convention adopted as the Bermuda Standard back when large scale sequencing was becoming mainstream, and the first genomes (of bacteria) were being produced. The coverage must be 98%. Usually, the last 2% are virtually impossible to elucidate because they are so repetitive (e.g. around centromeres) that you cannot tell how many copies of the repeats there are. The repeat regions are much larger than the contiguous sequences of about ~1000 bases you get from the sequencing machine "reads", so unambiguously assembling the overlapping reads becomes impossible. Luckily, the most useful data is in the 98% percent that is easier to sequence.
With regards to the 6GB, the human genome project has sequenced much, much more than 3GB. What you end up with is an assembly of the sequence into 3GB based on the consensus of the genomic DNA used (they did not do just one individual). The differences between the individuals are also recorded, largely as Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs). These SNPs form the majority of the differences between the 2 copies of chromosomes (23*2) we all have.
On a technical note, all of the new techniques that are being commercialized for very high throughput sequencing (e.g. 454) rely VERY heavily on computer power to assemble the results into meaningful, long sequences. If you though assembling the Human Genome Project would be a lot of work with its 1000 base reads, try assembling data from the new techniques, with their 100 or 25 base reads (depending on the technology you use). The less overlap you have between reads, the harder it is to resolve the assembly unambiguously...
Can someone explain what genome sequencing actually does? Does it "simply" give you a complete description of the base pairs of someone's DNA? Or is it a little more complicated than that, telling you where the individual genes begin and end? What information can you derive when you know the sequence of all the base pairs? How does genome sequencing differ from the mapping of the genome? As I understand it, the mapping of the human genome was completed a while back, but I have been able to find a decent answer about what that actually means, or what the significane of that is.
Wikipedia and a quick Google search ended up being worse than useless for getting any answers; the Wikipedia sequencing article is like any of the quantum mechanics articles in that it counterintuitively assumes the reader has a firm grasp of the underlying principles and concepts.