Operomics: molecular analysis of tissues from DNA to RNA to protein

The identification of coding sequences in a number of species, including human in the near future, has ushered in the post-genome era. In this era, technologies are becoming available that allow the profiling of tissues and cell populations at the genomic, transcriptomic and proteomic levels. The molecular analysis of tissues at all three levels has been referred to as operomics. This review covers some basic technologies for operomics and their application to some lymphoid disorders. It is proposed that no one type of analysis is fully informative and that information that can be derived from the different compartments encompassed in operomics is complementary. Prospects for introducing such profiling technologies into the clinical laboratory will depend on their robustness, their user friendliness and the clinical relevance of the added information they provide, which cannot be captured through other technologies in use in the clinical laboratory.