By UTMB’s David Niesel and Norbert Herzog: It’s only been 150 years since scientists discovered what we now call DNA. Today, it’s a household word, the basis for the field genomics and an integral part to multitudes of scientific studies. Genomics continues to be a part of a revolution that merges the rigors of computational science and engineering with modern biology. It cost $1 billion and took eight years to complete the sequence of the first human genome. Now, the cost of sequencing a human genome is only $2,000-$4,000 and takes a mere 1-3 days to complete. More than 2,500 human genomes have been sequenced from 26 distinct populations, and 100 million genetic variations have been discovered from these human samples so far. These variations are part of what make us each unique as people, but they can also reveal why we might be experiencing or have susceptibility to disease. Much research is now focused on genomes and their relation to disease.