Epilogue: Peering through the crystal ball

Abstract

Throughout this book, we discussed various aspects of computational genomics, all of which, more or less, fit under the broad categories of functional prediction or evolutionary reconstruction. Before we put the pen down, it is tempting to dream of the future. We hope that, when presenting on these pages several research directions in computational genomics, be it exploitation of genomic context for prediction of gene functions or reconstruction of early evolutionary events, we managed to convey to the reader the openness of the most important problems in each of these areas. It does not seem to make sense to recapitulate these. However, it is attractive to think of some real new avenues of research, those that are in their infancy now, but may be expected to flourish, say, in the year 2012. The images in the crystal ball are vague and we may easily take them for something that they are not, but since we are trying to think big, it will not be too embarrassing to miss the target.

It’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future.

Attributed to Yogi Berra, Niels Bohr, Mark Twain, and many others (http://larry.denenberg.com/predictions.html)

If you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Yogi Berra