If you listen closely, you can hear the buzz of the insectary, and the whir of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute DNA sequencers. On a daily basis, these machines produce enormous amounts of data – data that is underpinning important research happening around the world. In the fight against malaria, genome sequencing is helping us to understand how parasite and mosquito populations are evolving, and how these genetic changes contribute to drug and insecticide resistance.

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