In the news

Seven months after the announcement that the human genome had been sequenced, the papers detailing the research are being published: the results of the publicly-funded project in Nature (see also the web feature Genome Gateway) and of the private company Celera Genomics in Science magazine. Analysis of the sequence has yielded several surprises. For example, it is estimated that the genome contains just under 32,000 genes, whereas estimates before the complete sequence was available generally ranged between about 70,000 and 10,000. This does not mean, however, that working out how genes and genome function will be simple. The fragmented nature of many genes, the fact that many of them can encode more than one different protein product, and the complexity of the regulatory circuits controlling gene expression mean that there is a huge amount of work to do. New approaches are being developed that enable the activity of many different genes to be measured simultaneously - the molecular biology of the future will be the biology of complete systems (cells, tissues, organs and organisms) rather than of individual components. The success of these approaches will be vital if the potential for finding new ways of diagnosing, treating and preventing disease is to be realised. The sequence of all the genes in the genome is an essential reference manual for biological and medical science but it does not by itself tell us the molecular details of how living creatures develop, function and reproduce, or how these processes vary in different individuals, in health and disease.