ABSTRACT
The concepts of “proteome” and “metabolome” have been part of scientific thinking for several decades and these terms emerged in the literature quite early , particularly in prokaryotic studies. Association of the concepts with systematic analysis of eukaryotes became more prominent in the late 1990s, for example in functional analysis of the yeast genome (Oliver et al. 1998). However, “proteomics” and “metabolomics” are more recent linguistic developments. Nikolau and Wurtele (2007) state that the first use of the word “metabolomics” in the title of a research paper was in 2001. Its first use in the title of a publication based on plant studies followed shortly thereafter (Fiehn 2002; Hall et al. 2002), coinciding with the first International Congress on Plant Metabolomics (Wageningen, The Netherlands, April 2002). A metabolomic study in sugarcane came a year later (Bosch et al. 2003).
