“Omics” impact & challenges

Priya Paul,

Teaching Assistant,

Department of Biotechnology

Omics is a term used to describe a number of fields of biological research that focus on a particular kind of biomolecule’s whole complement or the entirety of a molecular process within an organism. The term “omics” is used in biology to describe the whole of a cell’s components. The fundamental goal of the omics sciences is to discover, characterize, and quantify the biomolecules and molecular processes that affect the structure and operation of cells and tissues.

Medicine is the field where the influence of omics is most obvious. For instance, developments in personalized medicine, in which choices regarding illness prevention, diagnosis, and treatment are made specifically for individuals based on data from genetic and genomic research, have been made possible because of the sequencing of the human genome. The creation of illness prediction models and the guidance of therapeutic choices, such as in the treatment of cancer, have both benefited significantly from genetic data in particular. The development of novel disease biomarkers from metabolomics has led to connections between omics and personalized medicine that are similar. For instance, research into metabolic pathway disruptions that impact levels of compounds like fatty acids and bile acids has identified biomarkers that may be used to predict disease.

Despite this, there are still many difficulties in the omics sciences, notably with regard to data complexity, data administration, and the fusion of omics study data with data from other sources, such as clinical data collected during normal doctor visits. Developing and improving assays are some of the most fundamental difficulties. For instance, in large-scale proteomic analysis, agents created to bind to certain proteins frequently lack the sensitivity and specificity necessary to maintain their affinity for the proteins of interest, leading to less-than-ideal protein capture.