Company Profile:

Formed in 2007 with support from the University of Warwick and Warwick Ventures, base4 innovation is a group of highly talented and innovative biologists and physicists from the University of Warwick and Oxford and Cambridge University specializing in molecular biology, single photon detection, and nanotechnology.

base4 innovation is developing a new high-speed, low-cost method of DNA sequencing which combines well-known techniques such as photon detection and fluorescent labeling with nanostructures and cutting-edge methods of nanofabrication.

Description of Proposed Sequencing Methodology:

To sequence the six million base pairs in a human genome in a matter of hours or even minutes using a direct read method requires a system capable of staggeringly fast detection at sub-nanometer resolution. Our solution combines an extremely rapid detection system based on well-known technology with an innovative method for providing sub-nanometer resolution.

A platform of DNA sequencing using this method will comprise an array of nanostructures, each capable of detecting up to one million bases per second, combined with a shotgun sequence assembly approach to reconstructing the completed sequence.

Given the inherent speed of our system, the sequencing of a human genome could be accomplished in a matter of hours and, requiring only low-cost consumables, has an expected cost of less than $500 per genome.

Team Quote:

In the last century, many great challenges have been faced and overcome: the first flight across the Atlantic, the first to climb Mt. Everest, the race to land on the Moon. These challenges have stretched the limits of human endurance and inspired the imaginations of millions in countries around the world.

The Archon X PRIZE is not about great distance or great height. It is about our ability – both as individuals and as a species – to look within. There is nothing more fundamental to who we are, no greater key to our ancestry and origin, than our genetic code.