shotgun sequencing

A strategy for sequencing large DNA fragments or entire genomes based on sequencing and ordering smaller fragments obtained by shotgun cloning. It relies primarily on computational power to assemble the numerous sequence reads of cloned fragments into a whole-genome sequence. By sidestepping the laborious phase of constructing physical maps of clones, shotgun sequencing is potentially faster than other approaches. It was employed by US geneticist Craig Venter's Celera Genomics company to produce a draft sequence of the human genome, from some 27 million different reads, in just three years.