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. It is used in functional genomics, pharmaceutical research and metabolic engineering.

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.

RNA interference may be used to generate large numbers of random mutations in organisms such as nematode worms. The resulting phenotypes of the creatures are then analysed. The large volumes of data generated by such work may be stored in specialised databases.[1]

Contents

Selected publications

Highly cited publications concerning phenomics[2] include:

Further reading

See also

References

  1. ^ Paul M. Selzer, Richard J. Marhöfer, Andreas Rohwer, "Systems Biology: The Functional Analysis of Genomes", Applied bioinformatics, http://books.google.com/books?id=2LWNGRnsi8MC&pg=PA166 
  2. ^ According to a Google scholar search performed 2010-05-01.

External links