Chipping away at genomic medicine

The overwhelming focus of scientists for years has been on collecting and disseminating DNA sequence information through efforts such as the Human Genome Project. Parallel to this, remarkable progress has been made in the development of numerous technologies and tools for assessing global alterations in gene expression, in particular the differences between normal and disease samples. Most of the Chipping Forecast is devoted to articles describing how such technical developments and 'global gene profiling' can provide a powerful research tool and can also have concrete and significant implications for introducing genomic techniques into medical practice.

An equally outstanding component of this supplement discusses the many different goals addressed by these high-throughput genomic technologies. Such goals range from hypothesis-generating attempts to assign probable functions to newly identified genes (for example, by comparison with the expression patterns of known genes) to the identification of therapeutic targets and the delineation of complex patterns of gene expression that provide a potentially 'pathogenomonic' molecular phenotype. But the use of these technologies is not restricted to basic biology. They are finding applications in areas as diverse as, for example, the identification of genetic signatures of pathogen exposure and toxicogenomics (the study of the genetic basis of an individual's response to environmental factors such as drugs and pollutants).