Genomic science

Within the field of molecular biology, genomics is the study of genomes, the complete set of genetic material within an organism. Genomics involves the sequencing and analysis of genomes. Genomics is also concerned with the structure, function, comparison, and evolution of genomes. In contrast to genetics, which refers to the study of individual genes and their roles in inheritance, genomics uses high throughput DNA sequencing and bioinformatics to assemble, and analyze the function and structure of entire genomes. The field also includes studies of intragenomic (within the genome) phenomena such as heterosis (hybrid vigour), epistasis (effect of one gene on another), pleiotropy (one gene affecting more than one trait) and other interactions between loci and alleles within the genome. Advances in genomics have triggered a revolution in systems biology which facilitates the understanding of complex biological systems such as the brain.

From the Greek ΓΕΝgen, "gene" (gamma, epsilon, nu, epsilon) meaning "become, create, creation, birth", and subsequent variants: genealogy, genesis, genetics, genic, genomere, genotype, genus etc. While the word genome (from the German Genom, attributed to Hans Winkler) was in use in English as early as 1926, the term genomics was coined by Tom Roderick, a geneticist at the Jackson Laboratory (Bar Harbor, Maine), over beer at a meeting held in Maryland on the mapping of the human genome in 1986.

Following Rosalind Franklin's confirmation of the helical structure of DNA, James D. Watson and Francis Crick's publication of the structure of DNA in 1953 and Fred Sanger's publication of the Amino acid sequence of insulin in 1955, nucleic acid sequencing became a major target of early molecular biologists. In 1964, Robert W. Holley and colleagues published the first nucleic acid sequence ever determined, the ribonucleotide sequence of alanine transfer RNA. Extending this work, Marshall Nirenberg and Philip Leder revealed the triplet nature of the genetic code and were able to determine the sequences of 54 out of 64 codons in their experiments. In 1972, Walter Fiers and his team at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology of the University of Ghent (Ghent, Belgium) were the first to determine the sequence of a gene: the gene for Bacteriophage MS2 coat protein. Fiers' group expanded on their MS2 coat protein work, determining the complete nucleotide-sequence of bacteriophage MS2-RNA (whose genome encodes just four genes in 3569 base pairs [bp]) and Simian virus 40 in 1976 and 1978, respectively.

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