Company Profile:

Our team is an outgrowth of our privately-funded Personal Genome Project (PGP). The goals of the PGP are to bring down costs, to educate diverse potential volunteers and families world-wide, to permit careful correlation of genetic and environmental variations with many traits simultaneously. We are doing this is in a new open-access model for hardware, software, wetware, and medical genetics data.

Description of Proposed Sequencing Methodology:

We propose to use our multiplex polony sequencing strategy (Kim et al. Science 2007; Shendure et al. Science 2005; Mitra et al. Analyt Biochem 2003) plus haplotyping (Zhang et al. Nature Genetics 2006 & Nature Biotech 2006). Our instrument (DanaherMotion Polonator model G.007) is capable of 10 to 35 Gbp per module per 2.5 day run. We will couple 200 of these modules to collect 100 diploid genomes at 30X coverage in 5 days, with the remaining 5 days used for repeating any weak runs to assure 98% coverage at 1E-5 accuracy. We have reduced the volume of reagents used and the cost per unit volume by about 10-fold each, such that that we hope to meet the $10K per genome goal soon.

Team Quote:

The Personal Genome Project was founded in recognition that "second generation DNA sequencing" has arrived and along with it the era of affordable personal genomics in which anyone can access their own genome. To make these data more interpretable, we need millions of well-informed volunteers willing to share their genomic and trait variations with researchers and with each other, without elitist or costly barriers to access. We feel that the Archon X PRIZE for Genomics will help raise consciousness, encourage cost reductions and standardize comparisons.