It was very obvious that it was a computational problem, all DNA analysis was highly computational then, as it is now. His guess was that ~500bp fragments would be enough to get a usable assembly.
But the Human Genome Project's approach of reconstructing larger chunks first was also feasible, and produced an assembly too, with a heroic four weeks effort of a former game programmer who even built cluster software at the same time.
But the Human Genome Project's approach of reconstructing larger chunks first was also feasible, and produced an assembly too, with a heroic four weeks effort of a former game programmer who even built cluster software at the same time.