The year 2000 marked the completion of the Human Genome Project’s primary goal. Through intensive efforts of both private and public agencies, the sequence for the three billion base pairs that encodes the instructions for being human has now been determined.⁵ As a result of the Human Genome Project, we have determined the complete chemical structure, nucleotide by nucleotide, of the DNA within each of these chromosomes, the chemical structures that encode our lives. It is an extraordinary accomplishment in chemistry.

Completing this sequencing of the human genome could only be accomplished by building upon discoveries in chemistry made over the past 30 years. It was about 20 years ago that W. Gilbert and F. Sanger showed that small segments of DNA could be sequenced directly using chemical methods. About 10 years ago, instrumentation for automated sequencing was engineered. And building upon all the advances in biotechnology of the last decades, from oligonucleotide synthesis to the polymerase chain reaction and shot-gun sequencing, biochemists in the last 2 years have been able to increase the pace of analysis, so that full genomic maps can be deciphered in months.

In this post-genomic era, what can we expect? Mapping the human genome brings not only a high-resolution picture of the DNA within our