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The English-language neologism omics informally refers to a field of study in biology ending in ''-omics'', such as genomics, proteomics or metabolomics. The related suffix -ome is used to address the objects of study of such fields, such as the genome, proteome or metabolome respectively. 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. 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. 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 , a sequence that does not form an identifiable suffix in Greek. ==Origin== The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') distinguishes three different fields of application for the ''-ome'' suffix: #in medicine, forming nouns with the sense "swelling, tumour" #in botany or zoology, forming nouns in the sense "a part of an animal or plant with a specified structure" #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 ,〔 〕 a sequence that is not a single suffix, but analyzable as , the belonging to the word stem (usually a verb) and the 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'' (1916) and ''genome'' (first coined as German ''Genom'' in 1920〔 〕).〔 Coleridge, H.; ''et alii''. ''The Oxford English Dictionary''〕 The association with ''chromosome'' in molecular biology is by false etymology. The word ''chromosome'' derives from the Greek stems "colour" and "body".〔 While "body" genuinely contains the suffix, the preceding 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".〔Liddell,, H.G.; Scott, R.; ''et alii''. ''A Greek-English Lexicon'' (). ((Search at Perseus Project. ))〕 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 (European Bioinformatics Institute). For example, the MRC centre carried out the first genome and proteome projects. ==Kinds of omics studies== 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Omics」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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