Publication of the draft sequences of the human genome in 2001 was greeted with considerable hyperbole, being compared to the invention of the printing press, landing a man on the moon, the development of the atomic bomb, and more. We asked several researchers how, five years later, the genome has lived up to its billing, and what the next five years of the "post-genomic" era would look like.
"I'm going to be aggressively positive. I think [the impact of the genome] is precisely what we expected, it has transformed molecular biology research - particularly the human and mouse genomes. There's a whole series of things that before the genome, would be a three-year PhD thesis to do. Now it's two seconds on the Web."
ó Ewan Birney, European Bioinformatics Institute
"You can't judge after five years. Sequencing the human genome was an enormous event. The impact of that scientific event will ...
