Beyond the genome: turning data into knowledge.

Since the publication of the draft sequence of the human genome in April 2001 (1,2), the pressure on life scientists to annotate and gain useful knowledge from the millions of As, Gs, Cs and Ts, is ever increasing. Now that the initial hype has passed, the life sciences field demands the technologies and computer power that can produce and analyze data in a high-throughput manner for drug discovery and disease diagnosis. Cambridge Healthtech Institute's Beyond Genome 2001 conference(1) (17-22 June 2001, San Francisco, CA, USA) brought together the latest research in these technologies in a 'tri-conference' that encompassed the 10th Annual Conference of Bioinformatics and Genome Research, the 3rd Annual Conference of In Silico Biology and the 5th Annual Conference of Proteomics.