Human Molecular Genetics and Genomics — Important Advances and Exciting Possibilities

The breathtaking progress in molecular genetics that has occurred over the past five decades and the transition to genomic medicine would have been difficult to imagine in 1970, when the Institute of Medicine (IOM), now the National Academy of Medicine (NAM), was formed. The term “genomics” hadn’t yet been coined, the tools and technologies that are the foundation of modern biotechnology were in their infancy, and methods for sequencing even a few nucleotides were barely workable.