UK scientists win £2.2m Breakthrough prize for DNA reading advances

Creators of next-generation genome sequencing take science's most lucrative award

Two British researchers have won the most lucrative prize in science for work that dramatically improved the speed and reduced the cost of reading DNA, the molecular instructions for life.

Sir Shankar Balasubramanian and Sir David Klenerman, both professors at the University of Cambridge, share the $3m (2.2m) Breakthrough prize in life sciences with Pascal Mayer, the founder of the French firm Alphanosos, for creating next-generation genome sequencing, or NGS.