With third generation sequencing, sequencing a genome has become a cheaper, faster and more sophisticated process. 

Next-generation sequencing brought with it a fundamentally different approach to DNA sequencing, cutting the time and cost needed to sequence a genome. 

Automatic DNA sequencing machines became commercially available in the late 1980s. They allowed scientists to carry out DNA sequencing more safely and efficiently. 

The Sanger sequencing method, developed in 1977, enabled scientists to read the genetic code for the first time. It is based on the natural process of DNA replication.

DNA sequencing is the process of working out the order of the bases, A, C, G and T, in a strand of DNA.

By the mid-1990s, when the Human Genome Project was in full swing, scientists were sequencing DNA using capillary sequencers.