Extranuclear Inheritance: Chloroplast Proteomics

Abstract

Biology has arrived in the “omics” age. Currently, there is no better justification for the importance of one’s own research field than adding the suffix “omics” to it (Fig. 1). This somewhat unfortunate tendency was initiated with the systematic and high-throughput sequencing of entire genomes for which the term “genomics” was coined. Soon, researchers using systematic approaches to elucidate gene functions felt it important to distinguish between “structural genomics” (i.e. genome sequencing) and “functional genomics” (i.e. elucidation of gene functions; see e.g. Bock and Hippler 2002). What are the criteria for “omics”? Certainly, any “omics” should (1) take a systematic approach and (2) use high-throughput techniques with the ultimate goal of achieving completeness (complete sequence, complete set of RNAs, proteins, metabolites, etc.). From this viewpoint, clearly, some fields are relatively far (e.g. “metabolomics”) or even very far (e.g. “structuromics”) from meeting these criteria and, here, enthusiastic addition of the ending “omics” appears premature (Fig. 1).