Genomics is a recent scientific discipline that strives to define and characterize the complete genetic makeup of an organism. Its primary approaches are to determine the entire sequence and structure of an organism's DNA (its genome) and then to determine how that DNA is arranged into genes. This second goal is accomplished by determining the structure and relative abundance of all messenger RNAs (mRNAs), the middlemen in genetics that encode individual proteins.

From Microorganisms to Human Dna

For many years, genomics has been focused on microorganisms, which have relatively small genomes. However, more recently the field has been energized by the advent of more industrialized, higher-throughput sequencing technologies. By 2001 more than seventy organisms had been completely sequenced, and a working draft of the human genome had been produced. Vigorous efforts have now been initiated to map the mouse genome, and one company already claims to have completed the...