Large-scale sequencing of the human genome is now under way (Boguski et al. 1996; Marshall and Pennisi 1996). Although at the beginning of the Genome Project, many doubted the scientific value of sequencing the entire human genome, these doubts have evaporated almost entirely (Gibbs 1995; Olson 1995). Primary reasons for generating the human genomic sequence are listed in Table 1. The approach being taken for human genomic sequencing is the same as that used for the Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Caenorhabditis elegans genomes, namely construction of overlapping arrays of large insert Escherichia coli clones, followed by complete sequencing of these clones one at a time. In this article, we outline an alternative approach to sequencing the human and other large genomes, which we argue is less costly and more informative than the clone-by-clone approach.