Beyond metabolomics: A review of multi-omics-based approaches

Abstract

Genomics and transcriptonomics studies have been the cornerstones of numerous biological progresses in several decades. Additionally, proteomic studies, especially related to clinical studies have been popular since 1970s. In last decade, owing to technological advances, considerable progress has been made in the metabolic studies of several biological phenomena, ranging from clinical to environmental studies. Since the advent of the Human Genome consortium in the 1990s, there has been an exponential progress in the studies of not only genomics (and metagenomics), but also transcriptomics and proteomics. A rapid rise in metabolomics and its complementation to the former researches has necessitated the combination of all these techniques to obtain a broader picture of the biological system. A combination study, broadly termed as ‘Multi-omics’ has been a field of interest since 2008. A ‘multi-omics’ approach combines major fields such as genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, in addition to minor omics-based approaches such as fluxomics, ionomics and lipidomics (among others) in order to obtain elaborate knowledge of an entire biological system, in a single study. This chapter discusses the progress of multi-omics in recent years and presents some case studies in multiple fields such as human health, the environment, industrial biotechnology and biofuel studies among others. The chapter also discusses the development of various analytical methods and databases in multi-omics, with tentative future trends in the field.