Badomics words and the power and peril of the ome-meme

Abstract

Languages and cultures, like organisms, are constantly evolving. Words, like genes, can come and go-spreading around or going extinct. Here I discuss the spread of one small subset of words that are meant to convey "comprehensiveness" in some way: the "omes" and other words derived from "genome" or " genomics." I focus on a bad aspect of this spread the use of what I refer to as " badomics" words. I discuss why these should be considered bad and how to distinguish badomics words from good ones. © 2012 Eisen; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.