The Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council have launched the second phase of the bioinformatics initiative. Key priorities for the three-year, Pounds 4.5 million initiative include developing a system to help predict the function of a protein molecule from a given DNA sequence; new approaches to comparative genome analysis; and understanding how IT can meet the challenge posed by the complexity of biological data and databases that take account of the uncomputerised or unstructured nature of much biological information.