Transcriptomics of Lactic Acid Bacteria

Abstract

Transcriptomics is a frontier subject in the post-genomics era and an important part of functional genomics, the study of the species, structure, function, and transcription regulation that occurred in the cells (the study of gene expression on RNA level). The purpose to study transcriptome is to understand all the genetic bases of organisms, including the expression regulation system, as well as the function and interaction of proteins expressed. Transcriptome is a bridge to link genetic information of the genome with the biological function of proteome. Thereby, regulation on transcriptional level is the most widely studied and most important method of organism regulation currently. Transcriptomics is one of the most important tools for large-scale analysis of biological gene expression processes at present and is more efficient compared to the analysis on genome level (genomics). Different with genomics, transcriptomics is also influenced by time phase and cell environment. Because of its capacity to study any moment of cell life cycle, transcriptomics can not only be successfully used to interpret the functional components of the genome, or to predict molecular components, but also be applied to study biological processes and the pathogenesis of disease.