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The Archon Genomics X Prize will challenge teams to sequence 100 full genomes for less than $1,000 apiece during a one-month period next year.
With the rapidly falling costs of gene sequencing, the field of centenerian genomics is about to explode. The Archon X-Prize aims to sequence the genomes of 100 centenarians. It's a good thing the old-timers are so willing to donate to researchers.
Grant Campany, senior director and prize leader for the project, said “the contest” will entail collecting DNA from “100 [people] over 100” until May 2012, and then racing several teams around the world to see who can code the genomic sequences the fastest and the most accurately. Campany explained while the contest is looking to create the most accurate way to process DNA sequences, this data collected from these subjects could be used to unlock other secrets, like how some live to 100 and beyond.
The race to probe the genomes of the very old continues. The Archon Genomics X PRIZE, which kicked off this year, will award $10 million to the first team to sequence the genomes of 100 centenarians in an effort to unlock clues to healthy aging.
Teams entering the competition will separately work on genetic samples from the same 100 individuals, each of them over 100 years old. When the individual results are combined, X Prize Foundation organizers hope for what they call a "medical-grade" genome that may shed new light on why some people can live for a century in generally good health.
The Archon Genomics X-Prize is offering $10 million to the first research team to sequence the genomes of 100 people who are age 100 or older. The goal: Get a clear view, for the first time, of what makes centenarians different on a genetic level.
With that goal, Venter has teamed up with the X Prize Foundation, a non-profit organisation that runs major public competitions to encourage technological innovation for the benefit of mankind. Inspired by the Orteig prize of 1919 for the first non-stop flight between New York and Paris (won by Charles Lindbergh), the X Prize Foundation has already found a successor to the space shuttle. It has also partnered with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundationto find a better diagnostic tool for tuberculosis.
This month, the X PRIZE Foundation and Medco Health Solutions, based in Franklin Lakes, N.J., announced a $10-million award to encourage scientists to compete in a contest that could ultimately identify the genes that protect against disease.
They’ve partnered with the X Prize Foundation, which has offered a $10 million award to whoever can develop a technique to sequence 100 genomes (the full code contained in our DNA) in less than 30 days, at a cost of less than $1,000 per genome. Such a technology, if developed, would enable companies to do widespread genome testing, something that’s currently prohibitively expensive.
Two medical consultants for the competition — Nir Barzilai, director of the Institute for Aging Research at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, and Thomas Perls, director of Boston Medical Center New England Centenarian Study — said the point is not to make everyone able to live past 100, but to determine what makes these centenarians so healthy for most of their days.
