British labs seek to bolster global variant network

The air-conditioners hum constantly in the laboratory at the Wellcome Sanger Institute, countering the heat thrown off by rows of high-tech sequencing machines that work seven days a week analyzing the genetic material of COVID-19 cases from throughout the UK. The laboratory is one example of how British scientists have industrialized the process of genome sequencing during the COVID-19 pandemic, cutting the time and cost needed to generate a unique genetic fingerprint for each coronavirus case analyzed. That made the UK a world leader in COVID-19 sequencing, helping public health authorities track the spread of new variants, develop vaccines and…