Illumina machines can be tweaked to give data quickly, says Chad Nusbaum, the co-director of the Genome Sequencing and Analysis program at the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Mass.

FORBES: The Torrent On Ion Torrent

Future research will look at how the microbiome is "established in infants and maintained throughout life, " said Bruce Birren, co-director of the Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard.

WSJ: Gene Map of Body's Microbes Is New Health Tool

Chad Nusbaum, co-director of the Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program at the Broad Institute, says that he thinks of the technology as being akin to digital photography: it was adopted because it was small and fast, but there was always the potential that it would replace film.

FORBES: The DNA Sequencer That Could Go To Mars