page_title: Omics
section_title: Origin
hierarchical_section_title: Omics / Origin
caption_attribution_description: English: Building of the Estonian Biocentre which houses the Estonian Genome Centre and Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Tartu in Tartu, Estonia.
context_page_description: The branches of science known informally as omics are various disciplines in biology whose names end in the suffix -omics, 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.
context_section_description: 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 -ωμα, a sequence that is  not a single suffix, but analyzable as  -ω-μα, the -ω- belonging to the word stem (usually a verb) 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 (1916) and  genome (first coined as German Genom in 1920).
  The association with chromosome in molecular biology is by false etymology. The word chromosome derives from the Greek stems χρωμ(ατ)- "colour" and σωμ(ατ)- "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 (European Bioinformatics Institute). For example, the MRC centre carried out the first genome and proteome projects.
caption: "Omicum": Building of the Estonian Biocentre which houses the Estonian Genome Centre and Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of Tartu in Tartu, Estonia.
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