Omics


The branches of science known informally as omics are various disciplines in biology whose names end in the suffix ', such as genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and glycomics. Omics aims at the collective characterization and quantification of pools of biological molecules that translate into the structure, function, and dynamics of an organism or organisms.
The related suffix -ome' is used to address the objects of study of such fields, such as the genome, proteome or metabolome respectively. The suffix -ome as used in molecular biology refers to a totality'' of some sort; it is an example of a "neo-suffix" formed by abstraction from various Greek terms in -ωμα, a sequence that does not form an identifiable suffix in Greek.
Functional genomics aims at identifying the functions of as many genes as possible of a given organism. It combines
different -omics techniques such as transcriptomics and proteomics with saturated mutant collections.

Origin

The Oxford English Dictionary distinguishes three different fields of application for the -ome suffix:
  1. in medicine, forming nouns with the sense "swelling, tumour"
  2. in botany or zoology, forming nouns in the sense "a part of an animal or plant with a specified structure"
  3. in cellular and molecular biology, forming nouns with the sense "all constituents considered collectively"
The -ome suffix originated as a variant of -oma, and became productive in the last quarter of the 19th century. It originally appeared in terms like sclerome or rhizome. All of these terms derive from Greek words in -ωμα, a sequence that is not a single suffix, but analyzable as -ω-μα, the -ω- belonging to the word stem and the -μα being a genuine Greek suffix forming abstract nouns.
The OED suggests that its third definition originated as a back-formation from mitome, Early attestations include biome and genome.
The association with chromosome in molecular biology is by false etymology. The word chromosome derives from the Greek stems χρωμ- "colour" and σωμ- "body". While σωμα "body" genuinely contains the -μα suffix, the preceding -ω- is not a stem-forming suffix but part of the word's root. Because genome refers to the complete genetic makeup of an organism, a neo-suffix -ome suggested itself as referring to "wholeness" or "completion".
Bioinformaticians and molecular biologists figured amongst the first scientists to apply the "-ome" suffix widely. Early advocates included bioinformaticians in Cambridge, UK, where there were many early bioinformatics labs such as the MRC centre, Sanger centre, and EBI. For example, the MRC centre carried out the first genome and proteome projects.

Kinds of omics studies

Genomics

The epigenome is the supporting structure of genome, including protein and RNA binders, alternative DNA structures, and chemical modifications on DNA.
is the entire complement of cellular lipids, including the modifications made to a particular set of lipids, produced by an organism or system.
is the entire complement of proteins, including the modifications made to a particular set of proteins, produced by an organism or system.
is the comprehensive study of the glycome i.e. sugars and carbohydrates.

Foodomics

was defined in 2009 as "a discipline that studies the Food and Nutrition domains through the application and integration of advanced -omics technologies to improve consumer's well-being, health, and knowledge"

Transcriptomics

is the set of all RNA molecules, including mRNA, rRNA, tRNA, and other non-coding RNA, produced in one or a population of cells.
Inspired by foundational questions in evolutionary biology, a Harvard team around Jean-Baptiste Michel and Erez Lieberman Aiden created the American neologism culturomics for the application of big data collection and analysis to cultural studies.

Miscellaneous

The word “comic” does not use the "omics" suffix; it derives from Greek “κωμ-” + “-ικ-”, rather than presenting a truncation of “σωμ-”.
Similarly, the word “economy” is assembled from Greek “οικ-” + “νομ-”, and “economic” from “οικ-” + “νομ-” + “-ικ-”. The suffix -omics is sometimes used to create names for schools of economics, such as Reaganomics.

Current usage

Many “omes” beyond the original “genome” have become useful and have been widely adopted by research scientists. “Proteomics” has become well-established as a term for studying proteins at a large scale. "Omes" can provide an easy shorthand to encapsulate a field; for example, an interactomics study is clearly recognisable as relating to large-scale analyses of gene-gene, protein-protein, or protein-ligand interactions. Researchers are rapidly taking up omes and omics, as shown by the explosion of the use of these terms in PubMed since the mid '90s.