Archon X Prize

last updated by

MrMistery 17 years, 2 months ago

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- September 20, 2007 at 1:19 pm #8263
  genemachine
  Participant
  Hello 🙂
  You have probably heard about the Archon X Prize awarded by the X Foundation.
  They offer $10 million prize (US) to "the first Team that can build a device and use it to sequence 100 human genomes within 10 days or less, with an accuracy of no more than one error in every 100,000 bases sequenced, with sequences accurately covering at least 98% of the genome, and at a recurring cost of no more than $10,000 (US) per genome."
  I don’t quite get one thing: if the accuracy is to be 1 error 100,000 bases, then, there can be 30,000 errors in the whole genome (our genome consists of about 300,000,000 bases). This gives 0,001 % of errors that can be made.
  So.. why do they say that "sequences should accurately cover at least 98% of the genome" when my calculations give 99,999 %. Where is my mistake?
  Ola
- September 20, 2007 at 2:05 pm #76163
  mith
  Participant
  You sequence 98% of 300m, and from that number you get 1/100k error.
- September 20, 2007 at 3:03 pm #76165
  genemachine
  Participant
  OK, I see, thanks. Err.. am I the only one who finds this sentence rather ambiguous?
- September 20, 2007 at 7:10 pm #76171
  MrMistery
  Participant
  it seems ambiguous if you aren’t acquainted with how this stuff works. However, whenever i see 98%(or 99% etc) in genome sequencing lit a bell rings in my head saying "Hey you can leave out the 2% hardest to sequence! Yey!". The accuracy is 99.9999%, but you only have to sequence 98% of the genome.
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