{"id":15055,"date":"2013-08-09T16:10:58","date_gmt":"2013-08-09T20:10:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencebusiness.technewslit.com\/?p=15055"},"modified":"2013-08-09T16:18:14","modified_gmt":"2013-08-09T20:18:14","slug":"challenge-seeks-technique-to-estimate-age-from-dna-samples","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/technewslit.com\/sciencebusiness\/?p=15055","title":{"rendered":"Challenge Seeks Technique to Estimate Age from DNA Samples"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DNA<\/a>
(James. J. Caras, National Science Foundation)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A new challenge on InnoCentive<\/a> asks for a crowd-sourced solution for determining an individual’s age from a small sample of that person’s DNA. The competition has a a prize purse of $25,000 and a deadline of 7 October 2013 for submissions (free registration required).<\/p>\n

InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowd-sourcing competitions for corporate and organization sponsors. InnoCentive calls this kind of competition a theoretical challenge that requires a written proposal.<\/p>\n

The sponsor of this challenge, which is not identified, seeks a fast and accurate method to determine a person’s age from various specimen samples. Current means for estimating someone’s age from DNA, says the sponsor, suffer from being slow, difficult to use, and not always accurate.<\/p>\n

According to the sponsor, the increasing availability of technologies such as bioinformatics and high-throughput sequencing — also known as next-generation sequencing<\/a> — should make it possible to devise new techniques to determine an individual’s age. High-throughput technologies perform the massive number of sequencing computations in parallel, speeding up the process and eventually reducing its cost.<\/p>\n

The solution sought by the sponsor should be able to process DNA samples in very small quantities, taken from a variety of specimen or fluid sources. The techniques need to be easy to perform and accurate within +\/- five years. The proposal should also include recommendations of databases for validating age estimates from the proposed solution.<\/p>\n

InnoCentive says the sponsor will review all proposals, with the challenge awarded on the basis of that review. The sponsor plans to enact a non-exclusive license for the solution from the winning contestant. An exclusive transfer of intellectual property rights is not required.<\/p>\n

Read more:<\/p>\n