What is omics

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Definition of Omics:
Omics is a general term for a broad discipline of science and engineering for analyzing the interactions of biological information objects in various omes. These include genome, proteome, metabolome, expressome, and interactome. The main focus is on 1) mapping information objects such as genes, proteins, and ligands, 2) finding interaction relationships among the objects, 3) engineering the networks and objects to understand and manipulate the regulatory mechanisms, and 4) integrating various omes and omics subfields.

  • The Prefix- and -Suffix of bioinformatics: Bio- and -Omics
  • Difference from Systems Biology and Bioinformatics

    Systems biology is “biology” that focuses on complex systems in life.
    Omics focuses on large scale and holistic data/information to understand life in encapsulated omes (in many distinct biolayers)
    Bioinformatics is an information science that analyzes life processes using computational tools for solving biological problems and give direction/overview in biology. See the definition of bioinformatics in Bioinformatics.ws


An older definition of omics

A new biological research paradigm to produce knowledge en masse from the networks of information objects in holistic principles and methods deviating from reductionism.


A definition from Wikipedia
An omics is a neologism referring to a broad field of study in biology, ending in the suffix ''-omics'' such as genomics, proteomics or Interactomics. 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', 'whole' or 'complete').

The original use of the suffix "ome" was in the word "Biome". Later, "genome" became a popular word for the ''complete'' genetic makeup of an organism. Because of the use of ome succinctly describes the new way of holistic analysis of complete genomes and proteomes, the trend of putting omics became wide spread in and around 1995 by bioinformatists in Cambridge, Standford, Yale, Harvard and so on. Ome and omics are very convenient to describe holistic way of looking at complex systems. This omics view of nature and systems also well corresponds to eastern philosophy such as I-ching. Bioinformaticians/Bioinformatists and some molecular biologists were amongst the first scientists to start applying the "ome" suffix widely. In the mid 1990's bioinformatists started realizing the convenience of -omics and termed many fields such as metabolome, textome, interactome, bacteriome, eukaryome, functome, patentome, neurome and so on. Omics marks the realization of the importance of information processing in biology that was proposed by many biologists. It was only possible by the advent of personal computers and personal computer operating systems such as Windows, Linux and Apple.

This was because they were in the perfect position of looking at large scale data with most efficient analysis tools. Essentially, this was the era of bioinformatic exploration of biological ideas and concepts. * Biological omics in alphabetical order

Common omes and omics

Some of the more common "omes" are now well-established within biomics and genomics, having shaken their putative origins as buzzwords: * Biome is the top level ome in biology. Biome is one of the oldest terms, but it did not cause the explosion of -omics as it had been used by small group of biologists (not by bioinformatists). Biomics is the study of biome. See Biome.org * Biolome is the whole set of biological entities such as protein, DNA, RNA and small biologically important molecules. Biolome includes, for example, proteome.


The Omics Pathway

List of -omics in science

Biological omics | Medical omics | Other omics | Alphabetically ordered list of omes and omics: 


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