We review three graph-theoretical concepts: graph coloring, intersection graph, and competition graph. For each, we mention a variety of applications, discuss generalizations of the concept arising from the applications, and describe some recent results and open questions. * Fred Roberts thanks the National Science Foundation for its support under grant NSF-SBR-9709134 to Rutgers University. He thanks the Combinatorial and Computational Mathematics Center at Pohang University of Science and Technology for sponsoring the conference that led to this paper and offers his congratulations and best wishes for Com 2 Mac's success.