"This year's Cold Spring Harbor Genome conference saw the completion of 85% of the human genome in "working draft" form - with the expectation that 90% will be done by June 15th. One of the hotly debated topics was the number of human genes. This has been estimated at anything from 35,000 to 150,000. Considering the spread of opinion, the only way to resolve was to get people to bet on it - hence the gene sweepstake. This led to an interesting debate on the definition of a gene (see the text below along with footnotes) and how to assess that number. The basic rules will be that the number is decided on 2003 with voting for the method for how to decide on 2002. Genesweep was organised by Ewan Birney, from the EBI, one of the technical leaders of the Ensembl project to provide an current and consistent annotation of the human genome free to everyone. The betting book stays at Cold Spring Harbor under the care of David Stewart. Anyone can make a bet as long as they physically sign the book. " Link: http://www.ensembl.org/genesweep.html