Antibody Sequencing Algorithm Challenge

The goal of this 2013 precision medicine challenge, conducted with Harvard Medical School on Topcoder, was to find a faster, more accurate solution to calculate the edit distance between a query DNA string and the original DNA string. Prior to the contest, the best-known solution, MegaBLAST, processed 100,000 sequences to a high degree of accuracy, yet required 2,000 seconds to execute. A Harvard researcher spent a year trying to speed up the algorithm and reduced the computational time to 400 seconds (Lakhani et al., 2013). Seven hundred and thirty-three competitors registered for the contest and 122 competitors submitted solutions competing for $6,000 in prizes. The winning solution was hundreds of times faster and more accurate than MegaBLAST, and reduced execution time to just over 16 seconds. For more information see here.

Antibody Sequencing Algorithm Challenge