D ecennial anniversaries have for many years inspired practitioners of various scientific fields to play role of seer and foretell what future holds for their discipline. Readers would be wise to keep two things in mind whenever perusing such predictions: first is that soothsayers in sciences generally have had a rather poor record for accurate prediction; second is that any reasonable set of predictions for near future must rest on events of present and recent past. The first of these caveats derives most often from fact that any given science can take off in completely unexpected directions as result of a seminal discovery or previously unpredictable, and consequently revolutionary, advance in understanding or insight. The second caveat, stating that future depends on present and recent past, is particularly germane to any discussion of horizons of biological sciences in 1980s. For in science, as in sports and politics, momentum is a factor that must be reckoned with, and fight now biology has the big mo. Major conceptual and technical advances have been occurring at such a rate in life sciences in recent years as to leave many practicing biologists literally breathless as they vainly at tempt to keep abreast of information explosion occurring just in their own narrowly-defined disciplines (not to mention life sciences in general). Advances in science tend to be autocatalytic, that is, one conceptual advance or new technique often leads to a whole variety of new approaches, all of which may provide even more information; process then repeats itself, and ensuing logarithmic progression results in production of new information at a rate that would not have seemed possible only a few years before. That is state of affairs today in biology. Any atempt to foretell what will actually transpire in biology in 1980s is very likely to be off mark. Importantly, errors are likely to be on overly conservative side, for 1980s could prove to be most exciting period in several hundred year history of modern biology.