Others teams are taking a more sweeping, high-tech approach. They use gene chips and arrays to monitor thousands of genes at once. But some teams can make them for a fraction of that cost. Each of the chips have thousands of tiny gene sequences hooked on to them. The chips allow scientists to see which genes are turned on and off when normal cells become cancerous.
Researchers can watch the genes involved as viruses cause disease and watch drugs in action.
Until recently scientists could study only one gene at a time. And all of a sudden we are starting to see the big picture, the global view of biology. Meanwhile, as dizzying quantities of information flow out of the genome project, biologists face a pretty steep learning curve. So they are lining up for crash courses on how to use the vast new data bases.