What core concepts, vital for NGS, did George Church co-invent?

Molecular multiplexing and barcode tags

The development of Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) required methods to vastly increase efficiency beyond first-generation techniques. George Church, working alongside Walter Gilbert, contributed directly to this acceleration by co-inventing molecular multiplexing and barcode tags. These concepts are core to NGS because they allow for running an enormous number of independent sequencing reactions simultaneously, or in parallel, within a single process. By tagging different DNA fragments, researchers can sequence thousands or millions of distinct samples concurrently, which drastically improves throughput and contributes significantly to the dramatic cost reduction necessary for population-wide genomic surveillance.