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One for the Books

This post has been updated to clarify the record set.

A Rady Children's Institute for Genomic Medicine team has set a Guinness Book of World Record, the San Diego Union-Tribune reports.

In coordination with Illumina and others, the Rady team sequenced and analyzed a whole genome within 19.5 hours to produce a genetic diagnosis, a press release from Rady says. According to the Union-Tribune, the group was able to take off 6.5 hours off the previous record by using Illumina's NovaSeq 6000 Sequencing System and new high-density flow cells. Illumina debuted its NovaSeq platform about a year ago.

"That's really our dream, that doctors would be able to order genetic analysis with the same routine they use for their other standard labs and get the results back in pretty much the same time frame," Shimul Chowdhury, who directs the clinical lab at Rady, tells the paper.

Union-Tribune notes, though, that the approach the Rady team used isn't quite ready to applied clinically. Still, Stephen Kingsmore, the chief executive of Rady, says that faster sequencing will lead to faster diagnoses for the children they treat.

Kingsmore holds the previous Guinness World Record from when he was at Children's Mercy Hospital for fastest time to genetic diagnosis, with a time of 26 hours.

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