When scientists want to know about genes, chances are they use instruments called sequencers. There are quite a few companies that make sequencers. These instruments can give a read-out for example of a stretch of DNA or many stretches of DNA, even entire genomes and many genomes. The challenge has been that the instruments deliver--short reads—short readouts of sequence. What happens then is that scientists face the challenging computational task of stitching together short reads into contiguous sequence. But long-read sequencing is a way to address this challenge. 
The method of the year according to Nature Methods is: long read-sequencing. For a story I chatted with scientists at companies and in academia about long-read sequencing. This episode is with Dr. Jonas Korlach, chief scientific officer of Pacific Biosciences, which is one of the companies that offers instruments that can do long-read sequencing. 
(Art: J. Jackson. The following music was used for this media project:

Music:  Winnie the Moog, Funky Energetic Intro and Acid Trumpet by Kevin MacLeod Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3340-acid-trumpet License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license0