Although many of the genes encoding El Tor's pathogenic machinery were already known, the new sequence does reveal a number of unexpected metabolic pathways that may prove useful for drug development, according to Dr Mekalanos.
Though the firm has proved the principle, a single pore would take about 70 days to sequence an entire human genome (which has roughly the same number of letters as 1, 000 Russian novels).
But after the opening sequence, which is edited to the hip-hop rhythm of a number by the female rappers Nikki D and Cee Asia, the movie starts to go wrong.