I've long believed that I will be one of the lucky generation (Malthusian thinking aside) that sees their life expectancy rise exponentially due to things like the Singularity of quantum computing, genetics and nanotechnology.  Jitka, being a wee bit more grounded, often mocks my flight of fancy, but it's fantastic to see the X Prize take aim at mortality this week.

They are planning to sequence the DNA of various centenarians around the world to unearth whether their longevity has any genetic roots.  The prize for the first company to sequence 100 of these people wins the $10 million bounty.

"The Archon Genomics X PRIZE presented by Medco® is an incentivized prize competition that will award $10 million to the first team to rapidly, accurately and economically sequence 100 whole human genomes to a level of accuracy never before achieved."

Craig Venter is heavily involved in the project, which he sees as a first step on the road to longer life.  "We need 10,000 genomes, not 100, to start to understand the link between genetics, disease and wellness," he said.

The prize will bring a couple of benefits.  Firstly it will bring an enhanced understanding of the genetics of the very old amongst us.  Perhaps more importantly however it will see advances in sequencing, as contestants will be required to mine the DNA both incredibly accurately and very cheaply.

Teams will have just over a year to prepare for the competition, with a start date pencilled in for January 2013.  They'll need to be prepared though as the competition will only last for 1 month.  Given the success of other X Prize events however this could yield some big advances in our understanding and mastery of genetics.