With the completion of the genomic sequences of S. cerevisiae, C. elegans, D. melanogaster, and shortly, H. sapiens, in a sense the frontier has been officially closed on four of the most widely used and extensively studied species on earth. It is obvious that the closing of this frontier will open many new ones, creating directions and experimental opportunities for biologists and biomedical scientists for decades to come. However, the actual nature of these directions and opportunities remains uncertain.

In the popular press, and indeed in scientific weeklies, great attention has been paid to many exciting new opportunities. Most of these, however, involve the use of high throughput sequencing, expression, or proteomic data to gain quantitative pictures of how pathways, cells, and organisms work. In the extreme, these methods will feed...

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