Could there be a better time to be a life scientist? In the past two decades, a host of new techniques have been added to the tool chests of biochemists and molecular biologists. A wonderful benefit of the basic scientific research that fueled the advances in these fields is the wide variety of direct applications in agriculture and medicine. Even with all of these advances, and with the accompanying explosion in computer and information technology, it is clear that the depth of our ignorance vastly exceeds the breadth of our knowledge about complex organisms at the molecular level. Any new...

Could there be a better time to be a life scientist? In the past two decades, a host of new techniques have been added to the tool chests of biochemists and molecular biologists. A wonderful benefit of the basic scientific research that fueled the advances in these fields is the wide variety of direct applications in agriculture and medicine. Even with all of these advances, and with the accompanying explosion in computer and information technology, it is clear that the depth of our ignorance vastly exceeds the breadth of our knowledge about complex organisms at the molecular level. Any new...