The Next X Prize

BlueCup writes "The X Prize Foundation, sponsor of a widely noted 2004 award for developing a reusable rocket suitable for private space travel, says it is now teaming with a wealthy Canadian geologist to offer $10 million to any team that can completely decode the genes of 100 people in 10 days. And that's not all. As an encore, the winning team will be paid $1 million more to decode another 100 people's genes, including a bevy of wealthy donors and celebrities. Already accepted for future decoding: Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul G. Allen and former junk-bond king Michael Milken."

Will they decode Ballmer's genes as well?

See if they can find the chair-throwing gene...

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Believe me I've seen gene before in my wife. That should be the XX Prize

Re:Will they decode Ballmer's genes as well?

Like... an X-Prize for an X-wife?

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If Gene was in your wife, wouldn't that be the XXX Prize?

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See if they can find the chair-throwing gene...

I sure they find that gene that gets people stuck repeating same old jokes for years, although they are not funny.

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Wouldn't that be on the same chromosome with the monkey dance gene?

This is the beginning of the end

Maybe MY genes are worth decoding too, despite the fact that I'm not a C-level executive at a Fortune 500 company.

Welcome to the World of Tomorrow! Where only the obscenely rich can afford immortality for themselves and their families, and the rest of us are left out in the cold... we are called "invalids" with an icy, sneering indifference by the wealthy, geneticly gifted sons of Paul Allen and Larry Page.

Wake up people. There's a war on the horizon and the denying this technology to us proles us is going to be a major weapon.

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There's a war on the horizon and the denying this technology to us proles us is going to be a major weapon.

Calm down. Technology, if it is useful, invariably gets cheaper and hence more accessible. Once upon a time only the "rich" had cell phones. Only th

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On a global scale, these things are still true.

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Your genes, Anonymous Coward, were sequenced by the Human Genome Project before anybody else's. But really, at $1m for 100 people at a prototype stage, this isn't hugely expensive (if anyone manages to make it cost-effective). Going into production from th

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I'm not sure I want my genes decoded. It would be interesting, and might turn up some possible health issues before they become a serious problem, but I don't think it would do me any good if that data fell into the hands of my insurer or the government,

Didn't know

they were encrypted.

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Yeah, Sony and Microsoft partnered to create Digital Rights Management for Humans. We should be careful, though. As I understand the EULA, if we attempt to decode Paul Allen's genetic code without purchasing a license to his soul, he might be obiliterated.

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As much as you joke, with all the patenting of the parts of the human genome, we'll have to see whether we'll be allowed to reproduce at all without breaking someone's patent...

We might be looking at some Genome Rights Management in the not-so-distant fut

GRM

Actually Sony's Gene Rights Management technology rootkits your own genes, so that if you attempt to copy Steve Allen's DNA without permission they can basically turn you into someone else.

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So if I reverse engineer this GRM rootkit properly I can turn myself into whoever I want? Say, Chuck Norris? Sweet...

(Legal implications aside of course)

And to sweeten the deal

"And to sweeten the deal, we've hidden special codes somewhere the spleen section section of the genes of everyone on earth. Make sure to check these codes at www.mountaindew.com to win your free iTunes music: and one prize winner WILL RECEIVE A NEW NISSAN XTERRA!"

From TFA

Are the rich and famous really different from the rest of us, down in their genes?

Hmmm... is there a gene (or a set of genes) responsible for, say, the desire to make huge amounts of money?
Or are there actual genes which determine how much introverted or extroverted a person is?

Of course, I don't think the rich and the famous are substantially different from the rest of you, but still... it's a valid question.

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The drive to be an entrepeneur is like the drive to be creative - you're born with it or not. Whether you can see it in your genes is another question.

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If it can't be seen in your genes, are you really born with it?

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Good question. It brings back the whole nature versus nuture debate. I'm not sure how much is just the way you are, but I know kids can be raised the same way and turn out differently. How much is inheirent in their genes?

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I stand corrected.

Or should I say "hvala na ispravku".

Interesting sample group

Hmmm... is there a gene (or a set of genes) responsible for, say, the desire to make huge amounts of money?

I just wonder if we'll be able to isolate genes for sociopathy [fastcompany.com] from the sample group.
I mean, Michael Milken, the Junk Bond King? I know he's done a

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I don't know, but I wouldn't mind being able to say that I personally decoded the genes of a bunch of rich and famous people. The 10 million dollars sounds pretty nice too.

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Of course, I don't think that money as such (or the desire for it) is encoded in our genes... but the greed, the lust for power... if they can be spotted in one's genes...

I'm not sure I'd like that, actually... imagine a world in which your job interview

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First of all, it's Gattaca, not Gattica.

Even more accurately, GATTACA - it's a DNA sequence.

Besides, no company would select ruthless, greedy, back-stabbing S.O.B.s. They'd select determined, task-oriented people.
Explaining the distinction - or lack the

I'll take the coach seats.

So a hundred wealth donors only had to put up 10,000 to get their genes decoded in 10 days? That means I can sign up for the 100 day process for only $1000, and the 1000 day process for just $100. I can wait three years.

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The first batch costs $10,000 apiece. The second only costs $1,000 apiece.

By that logic, you only need to wait 40 days and you'll have your genome decoded for mere $10.

I'm sponsoring a prize too

I'm sponsoring the XXX prize for two women willing to accept my genetic code at the same time.

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I'm sponsoring the XXX prize for two women willing to accept my genetic code at the same time.

You paying out a a million dollars to the winners?

Since this is Slashdot, I'll go with the odds and say that the only winner in this situation would be the

1000 TB

You just need to buy lot of 454 sequencing devices (http://www.454.com/) or Solexa http://www.solexa.com/wt/page/index [solexa.com] and have big datacenter. Then you use those sequencers to re-sequence those 100 people and compare them with the reference human sequence. Big datacenter - You will need 30 Solexa devices and around 1000 TB data storage this is a nice task for Google datacenter.

"wealthy Canadian geologist"

how does one become a wealthy geologist?

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Just like these [nrcan.gc.ca].

Man, this is scary!

Now, where can I go to get my genes encrypted?

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Just ignore my above comment, because another poster already mentioned encryption.

Nope, data compression is where it's at. I want my genes 50% smaller!

(*sobs at making such a pathetic joke after my first choice was redundant*)

$10,000 Per Rich Bastard

Given you can't do crap for $10K these guys are getting a pretty good deal. As for our genetic differences, I've seen the pictures of Larry Page in a speedo and I am proud to say we have clear genetic differences.

The Next X Prize

Wouldn't that be the 'Y' prize? They had better make it take a while. There's only one left.

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It's actually the X-2 prize.

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Wouldn't that be the 'Y' prize? They had better make it take a while. There's only one left.

Do you have a problem with the possibility of an opening square bracket [wikipedia.org] prize?

Nature vs. Nurture

Before this turns into a large nature vs. nurture argument, I thought I'd pipe in here with a really great paper that really throws a wrench into the argument.

In one of the largest Nature vs. Nurture shakeups, it was shown that the maternal behavior of the mother can cause epigenetic variations in the child that ultimately cause the child to grow up to become a nurturing mother or a non-nurturing mother (http://www.neurobio.ucla.edu/~lmp/Meaney.pdf [ucla.edu] ). This is one of the biggest breakthroughs in Neurobiology connecting specific epigenetic alterations to behavioral response (yes, there were controls, switching mothers/children, read the paper for the full details).

However, the genetic alterations here are not on the sequence level, but rather on the Epigenetic level (the state of the DNA). Therefore sequencing the genome of two identical twins who had different mothers (one nurturing, one non-nurturing), can lead to entirely different epigenetic levels, yet the sequences would be identical. The take home message here is that while the underlying sequence is important and full sequences will certainly help in the understanding of biology, the underlying state is just as important. This epigenetic variation is also one of the causes of cellular differentiation (stem cells, etc.), and also certain cancer types. In an effort to make my post slightly controversial, I'd go as far to say that a high throughput epigenetic snapshot is probably more important for understanding success in individuals than the underlying DNA sequence (however, it is my hope that a high-throughput sequencing approach would be a first step towards a high-throughput epigenetic approach, as they are tightly coupled in a sense)-- as well as providing great breakthroughs in other areas of biology (tissue regeneration, cancer treatement, etc.).

Why?!?

The original X-prize was to encourage development in an area without much activity and where it was small companies already doing the work. I'm sure Celera Genomics could win this prize more easily than anyone. What do they need with $10M? There are billio

What exactly does "decode" mean here?

Maybe TFA is more precise, or maybe it's more obvious to someone who does genetics, or maybe I'm tragically out of the loop, but what exactly does it mean to "decode" the genes of 100 humans? It seems like the real "decoding" would be to look at the ensemble of human genomes and match sequences and combinations of sequences in certain locations with specific phenotypes. That is, after all, the Holy Grail of genetic research isn't it? Given that information, looking at any given person's DNA and classifying their phenotype should be a more-or-less trivial task. Maybe it is the pure procedural/logistical problem of processing that much information in that amount of time that they are after?

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I'm pretty sure that most of the human genome is unknown. Although, having the complete genome of another 100 people matched with their identities/characteristics would probably make figuring out genotype/phenotype matchings a lot easier. If you had, say,

Here you go...

AGGTACCCATGGTAAACCCGTGC...

Can I please have my money now ?

How do they check it you got it right?

The current technology took over 10 years to decode one human gene set. At that rate, it would take over 1000 years to check the results for 100 people. I'm not willing to wait that long to collect my prize. And if they're not checking the results then

The "no worries club"

Google Inc. co-founder Larry Page, Microsoft Corp. co-founder Paul G. Allen and former junk-bond king Michael Milken

All of them are people that wouldn't be effected by insurance companies refusing to insure them because of potential future health problems.

I can do that now...

Let me just get out my codebook...

Ok, so, here is what I decoded on the last 100 humans genes I looked at:

Organic

Yep, they all say the same thing. Gimme money.

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I want the DNA for Milla Jovovich, for future use as a cloned sexbot. I have to have SOME kind of hobby in my old age...

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o, asides from the coolness factor, what are the real advantages of decoding your genes?

It's the ability to quickly spot genetic variations that's important. For example, it may turn out that a small genetic variation partially determines the effectivene

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What possible use is it to be able to sequence that many individuals of a single species in a short time? The only practical value worth that kind of money is genetic profiling; sort of the Nazi eugenics approach to social purification, but on steroids,