title: Phenomics: the next challenge.
abstract: A key goal of biology is to understand phenotypic characteristics, such as health, disease and evolutionary fitness. Phenotypic variation is produced through a complex web of interactions between genotype and environment, and such a 'genotype-phenotype' map is inaccessible without the detailed phenotypic data that allow these interactions to be studied. Despite this need, our ability to characterize phenomes - the full set of phenotypes of an individual - lags behind our ability to characterize genomes. Phenomics should be recognized and pursued as an independent discipline to enable the development and adoption of high-throughput and high-dimensional phenotyping.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Science, Florida State University, Tallahassee, 32306-4295, USA. dhoule@bio.fsu.edu
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Houle
authors.forename: Diddahally R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Govindaraju
authors.forename: Stig
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Omholt
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D057890:Epigenomics; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D023281:Genomics / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D010641:Phenotype