Editorial

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

These are exciting times for biology. A tremendous burst of energy is evident both in the research community and among the public in response to the numerous genome projects - including the Human Genome Project - aimed at sequencing the entire genomes of microbes, plants, invertebrates and vertebrates. Sequencing efforts have turned some academic laboratories into factories and some biotechnology start-up companies into big businesses. Financiers, politicians and the news media are more interested in biology than at any time since Darwin. And, indeed, the changes genomics brings to the way research is done in biological laboratories promise to be as profound as those triggered by the advent of recombinant DNA technology in the 1970s. It is in recognition of these changes that Genome Biology is named, as a standard-bearer for all the biology that is emerging from genomics and from 'post-genomic' and 'functional genomic' studies.