Editorial

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

The number of organisms with completed genome sequences continues to grow rapidly, and the past year has seen the completion of several major eukaryotic genomes, including those of the chicken and rat as well as the first chimpanzee chromosome. The addition of new species, such as Drosophila pseudoobscura, the pufferfish Tetraodon nigroviridi and the nematode Caenorhabditis briggsae, all of which have close relatives whose genomes had already been sequenced (Drosophila melanogaster, Takifugu rubripes and Caenorhabditis elegans, respectively), has allowed further demonstrations of the power of comparative genomics for genome annotation and evolutionary studies. While the advantages of free and unfettered access to sequence data are evident from the ever-increasing number of studies that make use of public sequence databases, the question of how to give access to publications of genomic and other scientific data continues to be the subject of much debate.