"This is when I start feeling my age," says Anne Corcoran. Corcoran leads a group that looks at how our genomes – the DNA coiled in almost every cell in our bodies – relate to our immune systems, and specifically to the antibodies we make to defend against infection. She is, in her own words, an "old-school biologist," brought up on the skills of pipettes and Petri dishes and protective goggles, the science of experiments with glassware on benches – what's known as "wet lab" work. "I knew what a gene looked like on a gel," she says, thinking back to her early career. These days that skill set is not enough. "When I started hiring Ph.D. students 15 years ago, they were entirely wet lab," Corcoran says. "Now when we recruit them, the first thing we look for is if they can cope with complex bioinformatic analysis." To be a biologist, nowadays, you need to be a statistician, or even a programmer.