The Archon X Prize: By Ansari

The goal: Sequence 100 unique human genomes in 10 days. Do-able? Maybe, with a 100 fold increase in processing efficiency and some very smart folks.

I was doin' some diggin' on the Ansari's - an interesting crew and I ran across a reference to Archon (the Vancouver diamond folks). Being me, I expanded parameters and started excavations. Very, very interesting. Archon X Prize by Ansari... Hmmm.

A nice fellow "Stu" Blusson (Canadian eh) has hired or has been convinced by "someone[s]" to cough up $10,000,000 USD for the "pot of gold" at the end of the properly sequenced "rainbow".

Significant potential competitor involvement has been sampled and not a "buccal swab" of news on it here (I may have missed it) let alone "the 8 guage shotgun" blunderbuss one might expect. It's still early days tho'.

Some of the competitors are lining up - "heavies" too. I must declare a conflict of interest when it comes to my favorite crew - Toronto Sick Childrens hospital, as our "network crew" helped with the install and de-bug of "Deep Maple" and another "box" from SGI that shall remain nameless - an enhanced SGI Origin 2000 64 proc MIPS R10K's that we aren't supposed to talk about in any meaningful way (20 year NDA's].

Many folks will see this competition as "wonderful". I see it and wonder. Look at the goal - ramping up unique human genome map multi-fold. It would seem a logical step on the way to "big brother" having "individuals" catalogued and indexed... it could also do some real "good". Anyone with an idea of the potential "bad(s)"?

I'm still workin' on the Ansari stuff - that's one deep rabbit hole you got there Neo.

Here's one "fluff" link for openers... ATS'ers are good at "ante-ing up" and could generate the "all-in" scenario in such a gamble in the search for not "who we are" (we've been there, done that) but "who each of us" verifiable are.

Globe And Mail Online article.

Victor K.

43'

[edit on 15-10-2006 by V Kaminski]

Many folks will see this competition as "wonderful". I see it and wonder. Look at the goal - ramping up unique human genome map multi-fold. It would seem a logical step on the way to "big brother" having "individuals" catalogued and indexed... it could also do some real "good". Anyone with an idea of the potential "bad(s)"?

More Bio-Piracy.

You can identify just about anyone now from their face alone, so I think privacy as we once knew it, has been lost for at least a decade now.

I can however, see the huge amounts of resources this will save in the long run when it comes to personalized medicine because right now, DNA samples are rarely taken for diagnostic purposes.

Speeding the process up wouldn't make you more identifiable, there are nearly as accurate ways of doing that at a fraction of the cost now.

It doesn't matter how fast they can sequence it really.

[edit on 15-10-2006 by sardion2000]