Bioinformatics is the key in personal genome projects and variome projects. Bioinformatics is not a set of tools but it is a proper scientific discipline. It regards life as a gigantic information processing phenomenon and tries to map its components and to model the emerging networks of the components. Bioinformatics in 2008 is driving biology into an information science. Most biology researches are now with massive amount of data that cannot be processed by hand. Nearly all the biological research outcomes in the next&nbsp;five years will have some form of high throughput data such as genome sequences, microarray data, proteome analyses, SNPs, epigenome chips, and large scale phenotype mapping. Bioinformatics tools in genomics and variomics can be found from various internet resources. There are various bioinformatics hubs such as NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information), EBI (European Bioinformatics Institute), DDBJ (Databank of Japan), and KOBIC.&nbsp;Some&nbsp;others are: Bioinformatics Organization (<a href="http://bioinformatics.org/"><font color="#0000ff">http://Bioinformatics.Org</font></a>), EMBnet (<a href="http://www.embnet.org/"><font color="#0000ff">http://www.embnet.org/</font></a>), and&nbsp;The International Society for Computational Biology (<a href="http://iscb.org/"><font color="#0000ff">http://iscb.org</font></a>). The following are major bioinformatics journals:<br />

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</span><strong><span style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt">Sequencing DNA, Metagenomics, and Ecogenomics</span></strong><span style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt"><br />

Next generation sequencing methods are not only mapping genomes. They can be used to map the environment. It is called ecogenomics. Environment to humans can be various microbial, plant, and animal interactions around us. Especially, microbial interaction is critical to our health. Gut bacteria are natural environment to us. Metagenomics is a methodology that sequences the whole set of microbes in our food tract. Researchers are realizing that human genome is complemented by such environmental genomes. A new term, 'ecogenomics' is now used to describe these concepts. Metagenomics and ecogenomics are for mapping the variation of environmental genetic factors.<br />

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</span><strong><span style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt">Mapping expression using DNA sequencing</span></strong><span style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt"><br />

<div><strong><font size="2">Conclusion</font></strong><br />

<font size="2">In 2009 and onwards, personal genome projects will produce unprecedented amount of biological data. New bioinformatics technologies will be required to handle them. New sequencing technologies will drive the next decades of biology and transform the medical practices in hospitals within the next decades. Fast sequencing unexpectedly brought us interesting applications such as metagenomics and ecogenomics. </font><font size="2">We have examined the current trends in genomics and variomics.</font><br />

<div style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; TEXT-INDENT: -36pt"><font size="2">Sung, J. et al. (2008). Inbreeding Coefficients in Two Isolated Mongolian Populations - GENDISCAN Study. <em>Genomics &amp; Informatics</em> 6(1): 14-17.</font></div>

<div style="MARGIN: 0cm 0cm 0pt 36pt; TEXT-INDENT: -36pt"><font size="2">Wheeler, D. A., M. Srinivasan, <em>et al</em>. (2008). The complete genome of an individual by massively parallel DNA sequencing. <em>Nature</em> 452(7189), 872-6.</font></div>