A review with 11 refs. offers a perspective on the challenges posed by bioinformatics and functional genomics. Bioinformatics here is defined as the development and implementation of computational tools and frameworks for the management, anal. and interpretation of biol. information, and functional genomicsis defined as the integration of anal. technologies and bioinformatics for the elucidation of the function of cellular components. Capabilities and limitations of some of the current technologies used in studying cellular function are discussed, as well as qual. similarities between problems in chem. engineering and bioinformatics. [on SciFinder (R)]