Impact of human genome sequencing for in silico target discovery

The year 2000 stands as a landmark in modern biology: the first draft of th e human genome sequence has been completed. T-or the pharmaceutical industr y, this achievement provides tremendous opportunities because the genomic:s equence exposes all human drug targets for therapeutic intervention. The ch allenge for the pharmaceutical companies is to exploit this definitive reso urce for the identification of potential molecular targets, rapid character ization of their function and validation of their involvement in disease pa thology. Bioinformatics approaches provide increasingly crucial tools to sy stematically support this exploratory target drug discovery activity.