A team of researchers has built a new tool called MetaGraph, designed to let scientists search across some of the largest collections of DNA and RNA sequences ever assembled (databases that together hold more than a quadrillion bases). With MetaGraph, queries that once took weeks, or were simply impossible, can now return results in minutes, even when the search spans global repositories such as the Sequence Read Archive. This speed and reach now make it possible to detect subtle relationships between particular genes, microbial species, and human diseases that were previously hidden inside vast amounts of raw, unanalyzed sequencing data.

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Karasikov, Mikhail, Harun Mustafa, Daniel Danciu, Oleksandr Kulkov, Marc Zimmermann, Christopher Barber, Gunnar Rätsch, and André Kahles. "Efficient and Accurate Search in Petabase-Scale Sequence Repositories." Nature (October 8, 2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-09603-w.