A number of genomes of parasitic organisms are presently being sequenced in the public domain, including Plasmodium falciparum, Leishmania major and Trypanosoma brucei with the likelihood of at least expressed sequence tag (EST) projects for several filarial and apicomplexan species. The early and timely release of sequence data to the community via the World Wide Web (www), and the public databases, (EMBL and GENBANK), forms an invaluable resource. Data mining, or ‘haystack searching’ this resource is becoming more fruitful to all members of the scientific community as the volume of data, diversity of genomes sampled, and accessibility increase.