Tuesday, September 29, 2009

-ome out

To whomever originally came up with the idea of sticking the suffix "-ome" on a term to describe the entire collection of said term (and "-omics" to describe the characterization of the collection of said term)...

Did you ever stop to consider the consequences of this action?!?!

I'm thinking 'genome' is the first example of this phenomenon. That was fine. I was even ok with 'proteome'. But it has gotten completely out of hand. Now we have: lipidome, glycome, glycoproteome, allergenome, peptidomes, secretome, transcriptome, metabolomes, phenomes...

And today's addition to the -omes from PNAS: the surfaceome, to describe the transmembrane proteins expressed at the cell surface.

Really? It was catchy and sexy the first few times, but now not so much.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to see what's happening with the bloggome...

1 comment:

Comrade PhysioProf said...

Yeah, that DOUCHEOMICS shit bugs me, too.