FDA launching the second precisionFDA challenge.

---

---

The challenge begins with two precisionFDA-provided input datasets, corresponding to whole-genome sequencing of the HG001 (NA12878) and HG002 (NA24385) human samples. Both samples were sequenced under similar sequencing conditions and instruments, at the same sequencing site. Your mission is to process these two FASTQ datasets through your mapping and variation calling pipeline and create VCF files. You can generate those results on your own environment, and upload them to precisionFDA, or you can reconstruct your pipeline on precisionFDA and run it there. Regardless of how you generate your VCF files, you will subsequently submit them as your entry to the challenge.

For HG002, the truth data will not be known during the challenge. After submissions close on May 26, GiaB will publish their reference VCF file for HG002. The precisionFDA team will then run and publish comparisons between each contestant’s HG002 VCF file and the GiaB HG002 reference VCF. This will publicly reveal how similar is each result to the GiaB HG002 reference.

For HG001, the reference VCF is already available. You are therefore asked to conduct a comparison between your VCF and the GiaB HG001 (NA12878) reference VCF, and include it in your submission entry, for the following reasons:

1. to ensure that your VCF files are compatible with the comparison process (remember that we won’t be able to check on your HG002 VCF until after the end of submissions, so you are using your HG001 VCF as a check that your files can be compared without issues)
2. for the community to be able to contrast your performance on a previously known sample (HG001) versus a previously unknown (HG002), and to evaluate any overfitting on HG001

Your entry to the challenge comprises your submitted HG001 and HG002 VCFs, your submitted HG001 comparison, and the HG002 comparison conducted by precisionFDA. Each comparison outputs several metrics (such as precision*, recall*, f-measure, or number of common variants). Selected participants and winners** will be recognized on the precisionFDA website. Therefore, we hope you are willing to share your experience with others to further enhance the community's effort to ensure accuracy and consistency of tests.

The challenge runs until May 26, 2016.

Source: https://precision.fda.gov/challenges/truth