[ibiza]

That's essentially how DNA sequencing works. The longest human chromosome (chr1) has about 250M bases. The DNA samples are sonicated to split them into small sequences, and then sequenced en mass 100-300bps at a time. The results are then reassembled into contigs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromosome_1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing#High-throughput...

[m463]

I thought craig ventner had a boat that did something similar to the ocean. It would scoop up genetic material on its travels, sequence what it found and store the data.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Ocean_Sampling_Expediti...

(the page doesn't seem to explain it)

[rbanffy]

True, but you wouldn't do that to the very last one chromosome in existence.

Some of these tomes might well be the last copy out there.

[rtkwe]

I think that's where the author pulled the idea from in the novel it's called the Librareome Project and a character brings up the similarity of the processes.

[tetris11]

The variability from one contig build to another is surprisingly big sometimes, lending some credit to the idea that Vernon's shotgun transcriptome approach probably has multiple "optimal" solutions.