 In the late 1970s, Sanger developed methods for sequencing DNA. The 1980s then saw the automation of these methods (García-Sancho 2012). This made whole genome sequencing of humans and other organisms feasible, and the Human Genome Project (HGP) commenced work in 1990 (Bostanci 2004; entry on  the human genome project).  New parallel, or “next generation”, sequencing methods that emerged around 2005 made sequencing faster and cheaper. Accordingly, the number of species and human samples sequenced increased continually. Since the early days of protein sequencing, sequence data was stored in digital databases, with GenBank being among the most important sequence repositories (Strasser 2019). Genomics, the science of analyzing and comparing genomes was thus strongly aligned with bioinformatics. Sequence comparison once more transformed evolutionary genetics and enabled new comparative approaches; now the DNA sequence itself could be used to reconstruct phylogenetic trees, and patterns of duplication events could be tracked in more detail (Suárez-Díaz 2010). Microbial systematics and ecology, in particular, changed significantly when metagenomic approaches, i.e., the sequencing of whole microbial communities, revealed not only the diversity of microbial life, but also the amount of lateral gene transfer between organisms, including eukaryotes (O’Malley 2014). But the availability of large data sets on human genomes also fostered novel interest in human diversity and history, enhanced medical genetics and the use of genetic data in forensics, and led to the emergence of direct-to-consumer genetic testing (Atkinson et al. 2009; Gibbon et al. 2018).