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Contest To Sequence Centenarians Kicks Off
ananyo writes "The first competitor has swaggered up to the starting line for a contest that aims to push the limits of genome-sequencing technology. The X Prize Foundation of Playa Vista, California, is offering a US$10 million prize to the first team to accurately sequence the genomes of 100 people aged 100 or older, for $1,000 or less apiece and within 30 days. Ion Torrent, part of Life Technologies of Carlsbad, California, believes that its semiconductor-based technology gives it a shot, and on 23 July it announced that it will compete. The Archon Genomics X Prize competition, to be held in September 2013, is intended to spur technology, boost accuracy and drive down costs — currently $3,000–5,000 per genome. Peter Diamandis, the X Prize Foundation's chief executive, says that the contest will help to establish a standard for a 'medical grade' genome, with the high accuracy needed to diagnose or treat a patient. This time, the X prize Foundation has relaxed the time frame, allowing competitors 30 days — rather than the 10 specified by the 2006 contest — and focused on centenarians, who might carry gene variants promoting longevity. The winning team will be the first to sequence all 100 genomes to 98% completion, with less than one error per million base pairs, and to determine which variants appear on which of the paired chromosomes."
How dare we try to figure out aging! We might figure out it's just a process and not some innate property of matter! We might even figure out how to prolong youth! Can you imagine what we could do as a species if we spent less money on healthcare? What could the species do with all that extra money?
Hopefully, they all told truth about their age and their age was double-checked, triple-checked, and quadruple-checked in different ways before they were selected for this study.
In the US, that would manifest a dodging the bullet
From a societal standpoint, it's not good to have elderly around, draining resources and hogging housing. In the UK recently, the elderly are "selfishly" (not my words, the government's) continuing to occupy family homes judged to be too large for them. There has been a drive to confiscate old people's houses as they have too many bedrooms, and multiple families could be housed in the same place. It's only the old people's selfishness that makes them want to live in such extravagant surroundings. The government pays fair market price for the dwelling, evicts the occupant into more suitably sized housing, and society benefits. The elderly consume fantastically large amounts of healthcare to allow them to live to such an advanced age. The best thing for society as a whole is for people to pass on just after they cease contributing taxes to the system. That way, much money is saved on pensions, social welfare, hospital care, and so on. In fact, in many cases, euthanasia is a preferable solution to old age, as is done routinely in The Netherlands.
Given all this, why is increasing longevity a good thing? How does it help society? Taxes cannot be paid by people who don't work.
Before you click that "-1 Troll" button, think about it for a moment. Attempt to formulate a thinking response. This isn't a troll, this is how many rational, educated people in government think about the elderly problem. Let's have some real discussion instead of burying real-world opinions with which we disagree.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
Okay, sounds good. Oh by the way, I'm personally offering a $10 billion prize to the first team to send 100 people aged 100 or older to colonize Mars at a cost of $1,000 a piece.
Clifford Reid, chief executive of Complete Genomics, worries that it will be difficult for the judges to assess the accuracy of the newly sequenced genomes. “The technologies participating in the competition are the only technologies for judging the competition,” he says, adding that he is hopeful that contest organizers can come up with “a clever solution that makes everyone happy”.
Couldn't they just give all of the teams a set of identical DNA (for instance, the teams unknowingly share the DNA of 10 individuals) and compare the sequenced genomes to get an idea of how accurate they are?
inherited state (Lamarck wasn't totally wrong, it seems) and life history changes to the gene expression may matter as much, or more, than the raw nuclear and mitochondrial sequence.
anyone know of a low-cost tool to capture that data?
While I'm sure that the X Prize Foundation has the best intentions in mind, it's important to notice that there is are least two rather glaring loopholes in their guidelines (http://genomics.xprize.org/sites/genomics.xprize.org/files/docs/AGXP_Competition_Guidelines.pdf). That is, one could easily reduce the cost to completely sequence those 100 competition genomes by contracting, e.g., with Illumina or Complete Genomics, to run a much larger order, say, 2000+ test subject samples, to significantly lower the cost. A second option would be to procure, through nefarious means, the CMOS/PCB designs to an existing machine, e.g., the Ion Photon I, then produce enough units so that the dominating price in the genome sequencing is simply that of the reagents and the bare manufacturing costs of the device.
In the USA, these people worked when work paid because the dollar was backed by gold. The retired before the Nixon Shock. More likely than not, these were union members that fought for everything that made the middle class possible. More likely than not, these people served in WW2 and/or Korea, so there are VA benefits come into play.
* Gold-backed US Dollar in their working years
* Union membership
* Military service (conscription or enlistment) benefits
* Medical care improvements throughout their retirement years meant Medicare paid for all the technological advancements during that period
These made longevity possible. The succeeding generation may not live that long by reason of globalism making people work harder for less.
Get it done, or no money. I kinda like that actually.
Obviously, this won't work for fundamental sciences, but more applied sciences can be funded this way. I'm thinking of practical engineering and design types of research, which all too often get side tracked by unsolved fundamental questions.
R.A.H. would be pleased.
Finally, the long awaited argument for decreasing the human life span. Well done!
A pretty young girl whose business card reads "The Howard Foundation" shows up at the bedside of several male subjects and says with a wink, "Have I got a deal for you."
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Also, they are far more likely to sequence a whole bunch of mutations, as the older you get, the more mutations you acquire.
But at least they won't be deadly, cancerous mutations.
P.S. Lazarus Long is a Robert Heinlein character that was basically immortal, in part because he was the result of a foundation's attempt to breed long lived people. Despite being born in the 20th century, he lived long enough for medical technology to advance to the point where they could cure old age.
After a century the soma cells are going to accumulate a significant number of mutation errors. The bad mutation become cancer or sencenence cells.
With all of these old people around what will happen to future generations of young people? Where will they play? The entire surface of the earth will be carpeted with lawns choked with past generations frisbees and balls. Think of the children!
http://www.acetonestudio.com
They will identify genes that correlate with:
1. an outsize sense of rational living: some exercise, balanced food, but not too extreme on either
2. a pleasant personality that facilitates the creation and maintenance of long-term social activities and relationships.
I operate on a lot of centagenerians and that is what they have in common.
Was I the only person who thought the phrase "kicks off" was a bit ambiguous when talking about centenarians?
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