-omics Guide, Meaning , Facts, Information and Description

Informally, an omics is a neologism referring to a field of study in biology, ending in the suffix -omics such as genomics or proteomics. The related neologism omes are the objects of study of the field such the genome or proteome, respectively (omes stems from the Greek for 'all', 'every' or 'complete').

The original use of the suffix "ome" was in the word "genome", which refers to the complete genetic makeup of an organism. Because of the success of large-scale quantitative biology projects such as genome sequencing, the suffix "ome" has been extended to a host of other contexts. Bioinformaticians and some molecular biologists were amongst the first scientists to start to apply the "ome" suffix widely.

New 'omes' are currently being defined by people in the field of bioinformatics. Observers have claimed that they vie for the most ridiculous 'ome', much like humourous names assigned to genes in the field of Drosophila developmental genetics. For example, son of sevenless and Darth Vader are both genes involved in regulating the cell cycle.

The omes are a useful way for computational biologists to encapsulate a particular class of cellular processes, or information processing related mechanisms.

Some of the more common "omes" are now well-established within genomics, having shaken their putative origins as buzzwords:

• The proteome is the totality of proteins (expressed genes) in an organism, tissue type or cell, and proteomics is now well-established as a term for studying the proteome.
• The glycome is the total list of sugar (carbohydrate) molecules in an organism, and glycomics (sometimes glycobiology) has become an established term.

Less well-established "omes" have been proposed, but are not universally used within genomics or biology as a whole. It is far less clear (unlike in the case of genomics or even proteomics) that a systematic enumeration of entities like these is feasible, or would help in providing biological insight. Some of the new "omes" are as follows:

• The transcriptome is the mRNA complement of an entire organism, tissue type, or cell; the associated field is transcriptomics;
• The metabolome is the totality of metabolites in an organism; the associated field is metabolomics;
• The lipidome is the totality of lipids; the associated field is Lipidomics;
• The interactome is the totality of the molecular interactions in an organism; interactomics has been proposed, but this field is now generally known as systems biology;
• The spliceome (see spliceosome) is the totality of the alternative splicing protein isoforms; the associated field is spliceomics.

Further speculative "omics" and "omes":

• Textome: The body of scientific literature which can be analysed by text mining. Textomics: The study of the textome.
• Kinome: The totality of protein kinases in a cell. Kinomics: The study of the kinome. Publications exist.
• Glycosilome: Related to glycosylation. Glycosilomics: The associated field of study.
• Physiome: Related to physiology. Physiomics: The associated field of study.
• Neurome: The complete neural makeup of an organism. Something a neurobiologist might be heard to say in the future. Neuromics: The study of the neurome
• Predictome: A complete set of predictions. http://predictome.bu.edu/
• Reactome: A Knowledgebase of Biological Processes. http://www.reactome.org/

Perhaps more absurdly:

• Psychologome and psychologomics: a proposed new name for psychology.
• Sociome and sociomics: a proposed new name for sociology.
• Econome: an economy (see economics).

Note that comics is not an example of this suffix; the "omics" in this case is not a full morpheme.

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