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  • TECHNOLOGY FEATURE

Closing in on a complete human genome

Advances in sequencing technology mean that scientists are on the verge of finally finishing an end-to-end human genome map.
  1. Michael Eisenstein

    1. Michael Eisenstein is a freelance writer based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

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A male scientist pipetting onto one in a row of bench-top DNA sequencing devices connected to computers

‘Nanopore’ sequencers, such as these GridION units, can decode tens of thousands of bases of DNA without interruption. Credit: Oxford Nanopore Technologies

With a complex and diverse topography of genes and regulatory sequences, the human genome is often likened to a landscape. But in many places, this terrain is less dramatic vista and more desert highway: vast and repetitive.

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Nature 590, 679-681 (2021)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-021-00462-9

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