Eye on the Prize

The Archon Genomics X Prize has started a human genome sequencing collection at Nature Precedings to "further develop and refine standards for evaluating human genome sequencing technologies," as the introduction to the collection says. Larry Kedes and colleagues have posted a validation protocol for the Archon Genomics X Prize, which will give a $10 million award to the first group to "efficiently, thoroughly, and accurately sequence 100 human genomes" at a low cost. The protocol they posted on how to judge those standards is open to comments and it will be periodically updated to reflect that crowd-sourced input, with a deadline of May 1. In addition, a Nature Genetics editorial says that the protocol will have uses beyond the X Prize. "We anticipate that consensus reached for the purpose of judging the prize should also guide future best practice for individual genome sequencing," the editorial says.