Genomes 2000 International Conference on Microbial and Model Genomes

The Genomes 2000 meeting covered a broad range of organisms, with the emphasis being placed on microbes, in line with the interests of the Institut Pasteur and the ASM. The talks in the ®rst session gave a taster of some of the eagerly awaited eukaryote genomes, several of which are nearing completion. In the second session, a selection of bacterial genomes were described and contrasted with each other, giving interesting insights into microbial physiology and evolution. The later sessions focused on the approaches being applied to whole genomes. There were representatives from databases who described how their resources are moving with the times, those developing or improving functional genomics tools or running large-scale functional genomics projects reported back on progress and described future plans, researchers using structural genomics demonstrated the power of this technique both in the lab and at the computer, and those working on evolution and comparative genomics gave us food for thought on many topics related to phylogeny and mechanisms of genome evolution. The meeting may have started with thèClash of the Titans' but it went on to show how smaller projects, in many cases under-taken by networks of laboratories, can also achieve important results. There are genomes of all shapes and sizes out there waiting to be sequenced and many genes whose functions we have yet to determine. As we start the new millenium, this is a rapidly growing ®eld and there are many exciting challenges to face. Stewart Cole opened the meeting with a welcome address given on behalf of the Director General of the Institut Pasteur, in which he described the history of the Institut Pasteur. The ®rst genome sequence to be released by the Institut was that of human papillomavirus. Since then they have completed the genomes of HIV1 and 2 and contributed to the sequencing of Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Bacillus subtilis and Mycobacterium tuberculosis. This was followed by a welcome from the ASM given by Noel Rose (Johns Hopkins University, USA), who once worked at Institut Pasteur. The ASM sponsored the attendance of several students and young post-docs. The ®rst speaker, Craig Venter (Celera Genomics, USA) gave an overview of the contibutions of The Institute for Genomic Research (TIGR) and Celera to the sequencing community, highlighting their work on Drosophila and human. Celera recently completed the Drosophila genome, which took 2.4 million reads. They then held an`Annotation Jamboree', in which a large team …