Fifty years of the double helix

This April it will be 50 years since the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA by Jim Watson and Francis Crick. Since then, the genomes of a wide range of bacteria, archaea, viruses and several eukaryotes have been entirely decoded, and the human genome is fast approaching completion. This issue illustrates the diversity of the field of genomics, which was born out of their discovery. It highlights work on a range of bacteria, plants and animals, using a host of technologies that have arisen since the discovery of the structure of DNA. Comparative and Functional Genomics would like to join with the biological research community in congratulating Watson and Crick, once more, on their crucial discovery and in celebrating the great strides that have been made in our understanding of genes and genomes since then.