Phenomics

Phenomics is an area of biology concerned with the measurement of phenomes—the physical and biochemical traits of organisms—as they change in response to genetic mutation and environmental influences.^[1] It is used in functional genomics, pharmaceutical research, metabolic engineering and increasingly in phylogenetics.^[2]

An important field of research today is trying to improve, both qualitatively and quantitatively, the capacity to measure phenomes. This include developing high-throughput measurement systems.

For example, the Australian Plant Phenomics Facility, an initiative of the Australian government, has developed a number of new instruments for comprehensive and fast measurements of phenotypes in both the lab and the field.

See also

• PhenomicDB, a database combining phenotypic and genetic data from several species
• Phenotype microarray

References

1. Houle, David; Govindaraju, Diddahally R.; Omholt, Stig (2010). "Phenomics: the next challenge". Nature Reviews Genetics 11 (12): 855–866. doi:10.1038/nrg2897. ISSN 1471-0056.
2. O’Leary, M. A., J. I. Bloch, J. J. Flynn, T. J. Gaudin, A. Giallombardo, N. P. Giannini, S. L. Goldberg, B. P. Kraatz, Z.-X. Luo, J. Meng, X. Ni, M. J. Novacek, F. A. Perini, Z. Randall, G. W. Rougier, E. J. Sargis, M. T. Silcox, N. B. Simmons, M. Spaulding, P. M. Velazco, M. Weksler, J. R. Wible, and A. L. Cirranello. 2013. The placental mammal ancestor and the post-K-Pg radiation of placentals. Science. 332:662-667.

Further reading

• Schilling, C.H.; Edwards, J.S.; Palsson, B.O. (1999), "Toward metabolic phenomics: analysis of genomic data using flux balances", Biotechnology Progress 15 (3): 288–295, doi:10.1021/bp9900357, PMID 10356245
• Gerlai, R. (2002), "Phenomics: fiction or the future?", Trends in Neurosciences 25 (10): 506–509, doi:10.1016/S0166-2236(02)02250-6, PMID 12220878
• Freimer, N.; Sabatti, C. (2003), "The human phenome project", Nature Genetics (Nature Publishing Group) 34 (1): 15–21, doi:10.1038/ng0503-15, PMID 12721547
• Warringer, J.; Ericson, E.; Fernandez, L.; Nerman, O.; Blomberg, A. (2003), "High-resolution yeast phenomics resolves different physiological features in the saline response", Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 100 (26): 15724–15729, doi:10.1073/pnas.2435976100, PMC 307635, PMID 14676322
• Zbuk, K.M.; Eng, C. (2006), "Cancer phenomics: RET and PTEN as illustrative models", Nature Reviews Cancer 7 (1): 35–45, doi:10.1038/nrc2037, PMID 17167516
• Eberius, M.; Lima-Guerra, J. (2009), "High-Throughput Plant Phenotyping – Data Acquisition, Transformation, and Analysis", Bioinformatics 7 (1): 259–278, doi:10.1007/978-0-387-92738-1_13, ISBN 978-0-387-92737-4
• O'Leary, M. A.; Kaufman, S. (2011), "MorphoBank: phylophenomics in the ‘‘cloud’’", Cladistics (27): 1–9, doi:10.1111/j.1096-0031.2011.00355.x