Great strides have been made since the first genome was sequenced, but there are still quite a few mysteries facing researchers. Stephen Quake, a biophysicist at Stanford University, has engineered a way of obtaining that information.

Chromosomes come in pairs; one copy is inherited from your mother and the other from your father. Right now, the standard techniques blend genetic data from the two chromosomes to yield a single sequence. Quake’s alternative is to physically separate chromosomes before genomic analysis. Cells are piped into a microfluidic chip; when Quake spots one that’s preparing to divide (a stage at which the chromosomes are easier to manipulate), he traps the cell in a chamber and bursts its membrane, causing the chromosomes to spill out. Each will end up in a smaller chamber by itself, and there it can undergo normal analysis.

This technology will make it easier to identify the variations between chromosomes, and could have a huge impact on fundamental genomic research and personalized medicine.

According to the Technology Review report, "Fluidigm, the company that Quake cofounded to commercialize the chips, is now looking at ways to automate the chromosome separation chip so that it doesn’t require so much expertise to use."

10 Technologies Poised to Transform our World