Unfinished business.

The past 40 years have witnessed the development to maturity of molecular biology from its beginnings and determined attempts to apply this discipline in medicine, particularly to genetics, haematology, immunology and cancer research. However, although we have accumulated a detailed understanding of the genetic code and the mechanisms of the central dogma of molecular biology and have developed exquisitely sensitive and precise technologies, most recently represented by DNA recombinant techniques, many of the fundamental biological problems of 40 years ago still remain unsolved today. Some of these are listed and discussed.