Molecular, Genetic, and Other Omics Data

Clinical research, being patient-oriented, is based predominantly on clinical data—symptoms reported by patients, observations of patients made by healthcare providers, radiological images, and various metrics, including laboratory measurements that reflect physiological functions. Recently, however, a new type of data—genes and their products—has entered the picture, and the expectation is that given clinical conditions can ultimately be linked to the function of specific genes. The postgenomic era is characterized by the availability of the human genome as well as the complete genomes of numerous reference organisms. How genomic and other -omic information feeds into clinical research is the topic of this chapter. We first review the molecules that form the “blueprint of life” and discuss the surrounding research methodologies. Then we discuss how genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic, epigenetic, microbiomic, and exposomic data are clinically integrated. Finally, we relate how this new type of data is used in different clinical research domains.