In a series of videos on the Web site of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, he discussed his role in the early days of DNA sequencing.

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The machines "are changing everything, and it's only going to be limited by our imagination what we can do with them, " says W. Richard McCombie, a researcher at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory who is on the hunt for cancer genes.

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These are the Wellcome Library, King's College London, the Churchill Archive Centre Cambridge, University of Glasgow, University College London and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

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But Prof Partha Mitra, a neuroscientist at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, New York state, says we need to be aware of the limitations of the technology in use.

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