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."

Comments

Re:Why's this a good thing?

[stephanruby]

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.

Isn't that what real estate property tax is for? To drive out the elderly from property that has increased in value?

Of course, if you live in California with proposition 13, that's no longer how it works anymore.

Re:epigenetic data may be more important

[Iron (III) Chloride]

ChIP-seq and bisulfite sequencing are used to capture histone modifications and 5-methylcytosines, two of the most heavily-studied epigenetic marks. Being that they're variations of "vanilla" sequencing (even though raising good antibodies can be moderately expensive), I'd say they're fairly low-cost.