Speed Reader: Gene sequencing gets a boost

In what some scientists are describing as the most sweeping innovation in gene sequencing in the past 25 years, researchers have developed a tool that can read out DNA’s genetic letters up to 100 times as fast as the standard technique does.

BALLS AND CHAINS. Panels depict how snippets of DNA attach to beads, which settle into wells in a plate that are filled with smaller, enzyme-coated beads.