Study documents genome sequencing completed in just four hours

A study has documented an instance where genome sequencing and result interpretation were completed within just four hours, demonstrating the technique's feasibility for routine clinical use.

- CORRESPONDENT

Described in an article published in the New England Journal of Medicine, the time clocked to sequence one human genome surpassed the Guinness World Record of five hours and two minutes, which was achieved by a team from the US' Stanford University on March 16, 2021.

Researchers and experts from Boston Children's Hospital and Broad Clinical Labs in the US and Switzerland-based Roche Sequencing Solutions, sequenced and analysed 15 human samples, including seven cases from the neonatal intensive care unit, over a period of three weeks.

"The mean time to generate variants from genomic DNA was four hours four minutes,” the authors wrote.