June 19 Genome scientists gathered at Beyond Genome 2001 in San Francisco hear David Haussler’s brief history of the human genome. Wired reports that “Thanks to Jim Kent, a UC-Santa Cruz student now hailed as a genome hero, a partial assembly was completed with no time to spare…” However, “the assembly phase is still not finished and it seems to be a more difficult task than expected.” In light of the difficulty, researchers met last week “to discuss this problematic phase and compare each of their efforts.”