Once it was in the realm of science-fiction. Yes, DNA sequencing (and its associated field, called Bioinformatics) has come a long way:). The first attempt at sequencing begun in 1990, and it took nearly 14 years to complete. Now scientists are getting much better at it, and faster and more accurate genome deciphering techniques are on the horizon. A report published online by the journal Nature describes one such method that is 100 times faster than conventional ones:):).

Microscopic Image of human chromosomes (Courtesy: BBC)The new technique has been developed by Jonathan M. Rothberg of 454 Life Sciences Corp. in Branford, Connecticut and his colleagues. The technique uses tiny fiber-optic vessels (55 microns x 50 microns) to detect and sequence hundreds of thousands of DNA molecules simultaneously. The results indicate that the setup can sequence 25 million base-pairs (each human chromosome is about 51 to 245 million base-pairs long, and we have 46 chromosomes) in a single four-hour run with greater than 99% accuracy:):).
A single such run of the system was able to sequence entire genome of the parasitic bacterium Mycoplasma genitalium (one of the organisms with the smallest genome), which includes 580,069 base-pairs!! And with an accuracy of 99.96%, that is just plain astounding:).