At the time, Venter was trying to accelerate the process of sequencing whole genomes, first one-celled organisms, but ultimately gearing up to take on the decoding of the human genome.

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Each sample is catalogued and photographed before extracts are run through a DNA sequencing process.

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Another has perfectly arrayed pores 3 nanometers across, a mesh so fine it is used to filter individual amino acids in the DNA sequencing process.

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He added that the increasing cost-effectiveness of the sequencing process was making it easier to choose strategically informative species rather than focusing on economically important ones, ie food crops.

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The program involved must know what constitutes a biologically meaningful resemblance, and it must also be able to deal with the errors that inevitably creep into the sequencing process.

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She says trying to look at only proteins, a process known as exome sequencing, misses some known genes.

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Once a variant looks like it might be a cause of disease, it is double-checked using Sanger sequencing, the older, more expensive process that was used to create the original draft of the human genome a decade ago.

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