Narrator: This is Science Today. The human genome is made up of three billion base pairs - which account for about one hundred thousand genes. Treavor Hawkins, director of the Joint Genome Institute, a facility co-managed by the University of California, is working to sequence about ten percent of the human genome. The international goal is sequence the entire genome by 2003.

Hawkins: I remember people saying that the genome program is very similar to the Apollo program. It's like going to the moon and that has some great analogy to it. It's a huge program - it's the biggest thing biologists have ever seen, maybe will ever see in terms of a coordinated program. But also one has to say, just like after they went to the moon, "what next?" and people are asking the same question now.

Narrator: What is next, after sequencing the mouse genome, is understanding all the proteins.

Hawkins: Genes make proteins. And within the cells, those proteins interact with each other and catalyze reactions - basically is what makes your cells work. Really understanding biology and understanding exactly what happens within disease states, it means that you really want to understand proteins.

Narrator: For Science Today, I'm Larissa Branin.