From the Guest Editor for the Special Issue on Computational Molecular Biology/Bioinformatics

W are in a revolution. The Human Genome Project brought biology from an informationpoor to an information-rich science, and this has caused a permanent change in its research, with causal effects on medical research. In fact, it will not be long before the general public realizes the revolution. Just as two decades ago, most people did not know about computers, so they do not know about micro-array chips, DNA, and the genome. We shall move from health care that is diagnostic and remedial to a system that is predictive and preventive. Each of us will have our DNA on a chip, and a doctor will be able to predict some of what will be wrong and right with each of us in the near and far future. Predicting diseases will enable early therapeutics. It is reasonable to expect that such personalized medicine will enable more drugs to come to market, reducing pharmaceutical costs for everyone. We in operations research have a great opportunity to be a part of this revolution because of what we do—we take an interdisciplinary approach to problemsolving. Our strengths are modeling, analysis, and algorithm design. We provide a quantitative foundation for a broad spectrum of problems, and we can see transfers of technologies because of our abilities to bridge the concrete with the abstract. This issue of the INFORMS Journal on Computing is testimony to that, and it is only the beginning. I began this project with the intention of attracting others in OR to join in this great adventure, and these papers have helped me fulfill this goal with the diligence of our Editorial Board: