There was a time when the publication of the entire sequence of a genome–any genome–was exciting news. I don’t have any particular passion about Haemophilus influenzae, a microbe that can cause the flu various infections. But in 1997 it was the first species to have its genome sequenced. It became immensely fascinating, simply because we could now, for the first time, scan all of its genes. Now the global genome factory is cranking away so quickly–with over five hundred sequences published and over two thousand in the pipeline–that a new genome is not necessarily news. There has to be something striking, biologically speaking, for it to light up the radar. My personal radar lit up last month, with