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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."
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.
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!
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?
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.
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.
He would be...but not of your memory. It's the Howard Foundation, not the Long Foundation. Lazarus Long was a member of the Howard families, and Lazarus Long wasn't even his real name, just one he adopted during the Masquerade. His real name was Woodrow Wilson Smith. it's funny this is starting in 2012, because, in the assorted Lazarus Long based books, the Howard Family members often mention the mysterious goings-on that happened at the Howard Families annual meeting in 2012.
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
After a century the soma cells are going to accumulate a significant number of mutation errors. The bad mutation become cancer or sencenence cells.
The harsh truth about old people is that supply exceeds demand. For example in the US there are now only about 2 workers paying into Social Security for each retiree, much lower than what was intended for the system to work.
The system would almost certainly have remained solvent while this structural issue sorted itself out (read:the baby boomers all died off) if the congress-critters were able to resist keeping their greedy little fingers out of it's fund for more than five minutes.
In any event though, anti-senescence research could actually fix this in the long term. If we can start eliminating the negative effects of aging people won't need to retire as early.
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
Everyday before going to work, I tell gammy she needs to mine ore, gold, diamonds and wood for me in MineCraft while I am away. I better see some full chests or else I'm breaking hips!!!!! Who said old people can't be useful.
Was I the only person who thought the phrase "kicks off" was a bit ambiguous when talking about centenarians?
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