By way of ScienceBlogling Sandra Porter, we discover that Cofactor Genomics has announced that they will sequence some genomes for free to enable students to learn about genomics:

In response to a great post on Keith Robison’s “Omics Omics” blog which highlighted how Next-Gen DNA sequencing platforms could change the science classroom as we know it:
http://omicsomics.blogspot.com/2009/03/next-level-in-genomics-term-papers.html
Cofactor will ask course organizers for a 1 page description of how their ~700Mb sequencing project could be used as an effective teaching aid in their class. We will review and choose the best entries during the month of May. Those entries will be awarded a free sequencing project including project experimental design, sample QC, library construction, sequencing, and computational analysis. Those projects will be completed on either our Illumina GAIIx and SOLiD-3 Next-Gen sequencing platforms.
Thanks for the idea Keith, and the great blog which all of us at Cofactor enjoy.
Send your 1 page description to
classroom@cofactorgenomics.com.

This is a great initiative. I, of course, would encourage people to sequence E. coli….
So what are you waiting for? Teachers, get your proposals in!