Foreword: MBP thematic issue on genomics

The revolution in biology that has resulted from the adoption of new methodologies of automated instrumentation, robotics, mass screening and combinatorial approaches is undoubted. There is a massive amount of new data now being amassed including sequence information and analysis of the mRNA and protein repertoires in various cell types. The genome has been joined by the transcriptome, the proteome, the metabolome, and the vaccinome. The editors of Molecular and Biochemical Parasitology thought that it would be of interest to provide a snapshot of how these approaches are being applied to parasitic diseases