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Published online 20 November 2008 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news.2008.1245
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Human genomes in minutes?
Not yet, but biotechnology company is on track for 2013.
A much-watched Silicon Valley company has published a proof of concept for its DNA-sequencing technology, which it hopes will one day be going through entire human genomes in minutes.
Pacific Biosciences of Menlo Park, California, reports today that it can generate continuous stretches of DNA sequence up to thousands of base pairs long.
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It is inevitable that the time and cost of sequencing our genomes will come down. Eventually we will be able to get our genomes sequenced in a matter of seconds for less than a hundred dollars. Sequencing is not the same as reading and interpreting our individual codes of life but this will greatly help in that endeavour. Eventually we will be able to take "the sorry state of things entire and remould them closer to the hearts desire".