[Postgenomic era, what comes after?]

Though we start to speak about postgenomic era, the genomic era has not been finished yet and the structure, function and variability of our genome is being still intensively studied and these studies bring us continually new scientific information--more than we are able to digest. The classical genetics utilized phenotype observation for discovering the function of genetic information and proceeded to the molecular basis represented by nucleic acids. Determination of the nucleotide sequence of the human genome is the top outcome of the effort. At present, the function, regulatory pathways and genome modifications have become principal targets of our research. If we compare variability, it increases in the direction from human genome to transcriptome and to proteom reaching the highest level in phenome. Differences concern not only quantity, but also quality with the exception of genome which is relatively stable and "we hand over to our children what we have inherited from our parents"--all other levels undergo dynamic changes, and from this point of view are much less stable and under continuous influence of environment. To understand enviromental factors shaping our phenome, a long-term monitoring of our living functions will be necessary and an instrumental approach has to be looked for.