Emerging economic sectors in the third millennium: life sciences to dominate US economy by 2100

This article, third in a series of six, describes Life Sciences Era activities. Life sciences, rapidly gaining momentum, will begin to dominate US economic activity by 2100, then predominate well into the following century (see Figure 1). Massive advances will follow as the 140 000 genes, and 3 billion molecular units (base pairs) comprising the human genome are plotted in rough draft before 2001, and definitively charted by 2003. Once laid out, comprehending genetic patterns provides the means to govern many of the 75 trillion parts in every human.