Scientists have been pushing for a system that can process thousands of genomes at a low cost for years. Today, Illumina unveiled a set of machines that can do just that.

Illumina's HiSeq X Ten system offers biomedical research institutes a set of 10 machines that work together to process over 18,000 human genome samples a year, at a cost of $1,000 per sample. The huge reduction in time and cost spent on each sample will help researchers speed things up.

The technology is aimed at decoding the human genome, which researchers hope will translate the human body's instruction manual. The more we know about the genes we have, the more we know how to fix them, or avoid diseases.

Check out more information over here: [Illumina via Businessweek]