The human genome is now available to all, via publicly available websites, and is annotated with a vast amount of data showing the many different molecules produced from it in different human tissues. The widespread availability of all of this information can give the impression that we are confident about which bits of the genome encode functional products. In this presentation, I will show that this confidence is often misplaced and that even well-studied genes likely still have many secrets to reveal using examples from my lab’s research. I will argue that this information is essential if we are to understand genomic findings in psychiatry and to turn this information into therapeutic advances.