Researchers unveiled MetaGraph, a search engine designed to index and query petabases of biological sequencing data, enabling fast retrieval of DNA, RNA and protein patterns from massive public repositories. Published in Nature, the tool uses graph‑based indexing to connect overlapping sequence fragments and allows searches that don’t rely on prior annotation. Authors say MetaGraph can enable discoveries that were previously computationally impractical, such as finding rare or unannotated sequences across millions of sequencing runs. Bioinformatics experts hailed the advance as a potential standard for large‑scale raw read searches and a complement to existing reference‑based approaches. MetaGraph aims to democratize access to raw sequencing resources, accelerating comparative genomics, pathogen surveillance and metagenomic discovery by turning unwieldy datasets into queryable indexes.