Gina Kolata of the New York Times reports that “New methods of quickly sequencing entire microbial genomes are revolutionizing the field.”

The first bacterial genome was sequenced in 1995 — a triumph at the time, requiring 13 months of work. Today researchers can sequence the DNA that constitutes a micro-organism’s genome in a few days or even, with the latest equipment, a day. (Analyzing it takes a bit longer, though.) They can simultaneously get sequences of all the microbes on a tooth or in saliva or in a sample of sewage. And the cost has dropped to about $1,000 per genome, from more than $1 million.

In the story Dr. Matthew K. Waldor of Harvard Medical School says “the new technology is changing all aspects of microbiology — it’s just transformative.”

It’s a process he used to explore the origin of the cholera epidemic following the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.