Bid To Have Your Whole Genome Sequenced On Ebay

Update: bidding seems to have ended at about 5pm EST today

Genome sequencing company Knome, in partnership with the Xprize Foundation, has launched an auction on Ebay that will allow you to bid to have your whole genome sequenced.  As an added bonus the winner will have a private dinner with genetics pioneer George Church.  Bidding ends today, so you’d better get moving…bring your deep pockets though: the starting bid is $68,000!

The proceeds, as well as much of the publicity from the auction, are intended to aid the Xprize Foundation, the foundation led by Singularity University co-founder Peter Diamandis, whom we recently interviewed here at Singularity Hub.

The Xprize Foundation sponsors several inspring challenges, one of them the Archon X Prize for Genomics: a reward of $10 million for the first group to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days at a cost of under $10,000 per genome.  Considering the impressive rate at which sequencing costs are going down, we would not be surprised if the prize is achieved this year.

Wait a minute, some will say.  “Wasn’t I just reading a story on Singularity Hub claiming that whole genome sequencing will cost $1,000 by the end of the year?”

Well yes, that is what we have predicted, but an often forgotten part of the equation is that even when the $1,000 milestone is achieved, there will be a limited supply of this capability until the company or companies involved can ramp up their capacity.  As a consequence, companies such as Knome will be able to offer much more expensive sequencing to those that don’t want to wait for the cheaper offerings to become widely available.

Yet even Knome cannot avoid the intense downward pressure on sequencing pricing: the $68,000 starting bid is way below the $350,000 Knome was charging just one year ago for its services.  Recently we wrote that Complete Genomics has stunned the industry with plans to offer whole genome sequencing for $5,000 apiece by June of this year.  $1,000 genomes will arrive either this year or next, and $100 genomes won’t be far behind.

So what do you get for sequencing your entire genome anyway?  Is it worth $68,000, or even $1,000 for that matter?  At least for the next few years, the answer for most people is probably no.

Simply looking at one person’s sequenced genome doesn’t tell us much.  We don’t know what any of it means!  Only by comparing the sequenced genomes of large numbers of individuals will we be able to make determinations such as “these 100 people all suffered from disease X, and they all happen to have the same modification in gene Y”.  It is a computationally expensive and laborious task, but only through these comparisons will the true secrets of the human genome be unlocked.

If you have $68,000 burning in your pocket, then head on over to Ebay and get your genome.  For the rest of us, just wait a few years and the same will cost you a lot yes, and potentially be a lot more useful.

Tags: Archon, ebay, genetics, knome, xprize