With the recently heralded completion of the human genome the challenge in establishing targets for drug development has shifted from identifying genes and proteins -- they have in principle all been identified -- to characterizing their function and prioritizing them with respect to their relative merits as targets for therapeutic intervention. A similar paradigm shift is in progress for targets for pesticide development and trait improvement. I will discuss the combined use of genomics and genetic screens in target discovery, and discuss the conceptual framework in which these and other technologies can be brought to bear on the challenge of optimizing this process. I will focus particularly on the notion that a target should be viewed as a pathway, or network of interacting proteins, rather than being viewed as an individual protein.
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