BOX 1-1The Other “Omics” Sciences

The term genome was first proposed by Hans Winkler, a professor of botany at the University of Hamburg, Germany, in 1920 (Winstead 2007). It was coined to describe the total hereditary material contained in an organism long before it was known that genetic information is encoded by DNA. Today genome is used to describe all the DNA present in a haploid set of chromosomes in eukaryotes, in a single chromosome in bacteria, or all the DNA or RNA in viruses. The suffix ome is derived from the Greek for “all” or “every.” In the past several years, many related neologistic omes have come into use to describe related fields of study that encompass other aspects of large-scale biology. Some of them are:

• The proteome, the total set of proteins in an organism, tissue, or cell type; proteomics is the associated field of study.
• The transcriptome, the total set of RNAs found in an organism, tissue, or cell type.
• The metabolome, the entire complement of metabolites that are generated in an organism, tissue, or cell type.
• The interactome, the entire set of molecular interactions in an organism.

The list of “omes” and “omics” is growing longer as scientists develop new tools and approaches for carrying out large-scale studies of biological systems.