After the public and private human-genome teams unveiled their respective works-in-progress earlier this year, there was some concern that interest in genetics and genomics would recede. Fortunately, the opposite has happened. Two recent pieces of news show that commitment to — and opportunities in — genomics and genetics shows no sign of letting up.

This month many of the same players involved in the public effort — the Wellcome Trust, the US National Institutes of Health and the Whitehead Institute — announced plans to map clusters of genetic variations that are associated with each other (see Nature 412, 105; 2001). Like the effort to map single-nucleotide polymorphisms, the $60-million effort will also be funded by biotech companies and pharmaceutical companies.

Also, the European Commission's investment in the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) earlier this year (see Nature 411, 229; 2001) looks as though it will soon yield dividends. This month, Janet Thornton, a structural-biology professor at University College London, was named research director of the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge in England. And Nadia Rosenthal, an associate molecular-biology professor at Harvard University, was named as head of the mouse biology programme at the European Mouse Mutant Archive near Rome. The news is doubly good — first because it shows that women scientists are increasingly rising to leadership positions, and second, because both women have been charged with expanding each institution from service provider to research organization.

With the right mixture of luck and diligence, the launch of the mapping project and the expansion of the EMBL will yield more scientific insight — and more employment opportunities.