The -Omics Series, Part 1: Genomics

Filed in archive Genomics, Proteomics and Bioinformatics on August 12, 2005

This is the first of a series of posts I'm planning to do covering the different -omics. As bioinformatics-aided technologies continue to emerge, it's getting harder and harder to keep up with the new terminologies being coined. I'll start with the very first of the -omics, the genomics, or the study of the genome.

With diabetes, obesity and other nutrition-related, chronic diseases on the rise, effective dietary advice is urgently required. Scientists hope to provide the basis for using food to prevent disease by analyzing the interaction between diet and the genome, an approach called nutritional genomics, or nutrigenomics. The ultimate goal is to be able to recommend a custom-made diet by identifying a patient's genetic predisposition to certain chronic conditions. Although companies such as Washington-based Genelex and GeneCare in South Africa already offer genomic-based, personalized dietary recommendations to their clients, scientists and ethicists are still skeptical.

Another application of genomics is the pharmacogenomics, which tackles the relationship between a patient's genome and the reaction to a particular drug. For example, Iressa, an epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitor designed against non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) works in about 25% of cases in Japan, but only 10% of cases in the United States. Two independent groups of researchers published their findings in Science and in