In 1990, the human genome project had begun with three billion dollars of budget, and the sequencing and analysis result of the three billion base pairs of human genome was finally published in 2000 to open a new era of genomics. Since the human genome project, many other genomes of eukaryotic model organisms, such as mouse, Drosophila, Arabidopsis, C. elegance, etc., became available, and this led the development of computational biology and comparative genomics. Also, during the last decade, the speed of the nucleotide sequencing increased significantly with lower cost by next generation sequencing technology, and the computational power to handle sequence information also has grown exponentially to make possible that a genomics approach is an affordable tool for many of the biological studies. In the entomology area, the 5000 insect genome project was launched in 2011 for understanding of the biology of insects in a new dimension. Based on the recent studies of functional genomics and the new discoveries in the biological sciences, such as innate immune system, RNAi technique, insect pathogens, etc., the information from the insect genomics study will make possible to improve our capability to manage insect pests in the future.

• Woojin Kim(Research Institute for Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University)
• Yeon Ho Je(Research Institute for Agriculture and Life Sciences, Seoul National University, Department of Agricultural Biotechnology, Seoul National University)