ABSTRACT
Measurements of gene expression and protein levels have a long history in the investigation of pulmonary diseases, and applications of these insights have already had some clinical impact (e.g., in surfactant therapy for neonatal respiratory distress syndrome). Nonetheless, there is great excitement about current methods of protein and RNA measurement. The ability to measure, comprehensively and rapidly, the individual molecules making up a significant fraction of the entire transcriptome and proteome of a specified cell or tissue qualitatively changes the way that scientific questions can be posed, data are analyzed, and biological systems are modeled. Furthermore, the computational requirements of these massively parallel data, both in storage and in analysis, have required the development of new types of multidisciplinary teams well versed in the biological and computational sciences. This chapter section is intended to serve as a broad introduction to the application of genomics (and tangentially proteomics) to biomedical research and practice of pulmonary medicine.
