Omics and anaesthesia: pharmacogenomics, proteomics and metabolomics

There has been an explosion of interest in the simultaneous study of a large number of biologically relevant molecules, the most well-known example being the study of a large number of genes or genomics with these large number of genes forming the genome. Similarly, the study of the translation products of these genes: proteins (the proteome) can be investigated in proteomics and metabolic products (metabolome) in metabolomics (or metabonomics). It is possible to compare, for example, the proteome of control and diseased tissues to identify disease-related differences. This process/technology is of interest to clinicians in that it may lead to the production of novel diagnostic tests and the design of novel and even personalized therapeutics.