ABSTRACT
Genomics refers to studies of an organism's genome. The analysis of gene function relies upon a range of techniques including reverse genetics and RNA interference (RNAi). By analogy with the term 'genome', the transcriptome is all of the RNA sequence transcribed from a cell's genome and the proteome is all of the expressed proteins of that cell. Genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics are powerful approaches to increasing our understanding not only of how cells function normally but also what the key changes are in disease and so will find increasing use in the diagnosis of specific diseases and in the identification and assessment of new chemotherapeutic agents. Organisms that have been modified by the insertion of a cloned gene are called transgenic organisms; transgenic plants and transgenic animals are both possible. Trancriptomics refers to studies of the transcriptome and includes, for example, the use of DNA microarrays to determine expression profiles.
