Mapping the exposome
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More than 20 years ago, I posted about the explosion of -ome and -omic words in biology: "-ome is where the heart is", 10/27/2004. I listed more than 40 examples:
behaviourome, cellome, clinome, complexome, cryptome, crystallome, ctyome, degradome, enzymome,epigenome, epitome, expressome, fluxome, foldome, functome, glycome, immunome, ionome, interactome, kinome, ligandome, localizome, metallome, methylome, morphome, nucleome, ORFeome, parasitome, peptidome, phenome, phostatome, physiome, regulome, saccharome, secretome, signalome, systeome, toponome, toxicome, translatome, transportome, vaccinome, and variome.
Plenty of important examples were left off that list, for example proteome.
One -ome example that I recently learned is exposome, whose meaning should be obvious, but is lucidly explained in a 2005 paper by Christopher Wild, which Wiktionary credits with coining the term — "Complementing the genome with an 'exposome': the outstanding challenge of environmental exposure measurement in molecular epidemiology":
Partially as a consequence of the emphasis on genotyping, the accurate assessment of many environmental exposures remains an outstanding and largely unmet challenge in cancer epidemiology. As measurement of one half of the gene:environment equation continues to be refined, the other remains subject to a large degree of misclassification. […]
The imbalance in measurement precision of genes and environment has consequences, most fundamentally in compromising the ability to fully derive public health benefits from expenditure on the human genome and the aforementioned cohort studies. There is a desperate need to develop methods with the same precision for an individual's environmental exposure as we have for the individual's genome. I would like to suggest that there is need for an “exposome” to match the “genome.” This concept of an exposome may be useful in drawing attention to the need for methodologic developments in exposure assessment.
The OED has yet to award exposome its Word Induction Ceremony, although Google Scholar estimates 45,000 hits.
Charles in Toronto said,
June 4, 2025 @ 5:51 pm
Could we coin the term "-omeome" to designate the overall ensemble of words ending in -ome?
Mark Liberman said,
June 4, 2025 @ 6:05 pm
@Charles in Toronto: "Could we coin the term "-omeome" to designate the overall ensemble of words ending in -ome?"
I think you've done it.
Ethan said,
June 4, 2025 @ 6:28 pm
The term that has been generally used by biologists, and for that matter by the NIH and various publishers, is "omics". But yes, I have heard "omeome" used somewhat tongue-in-cheek in scientific talks within the community.
Michael Vnuk said,
June 4, 2025 @ 7:57 pm
The list includes 'epitome'. I grew up pronouncing 'epitome' as 3 syllables to end-rhyme with 'home', because I first encountered it in reading and created a pronunciation based on the more general English rule of a final E after a consonant being silent but influencing the pronunciation of the vowel before the consonant, rather than the proper 4-syllable version derived from the original Greek, which I only found out well into my adulthood. (I gather that this is a common error out there.) Because 'epitome' is a much older word, with a different pronunciation, and with no immediate connection to biological science, I wouldn't include it in the list.
The list (which I accept was prepared over 20 years ago) doesn't include 'virome'. I just noticed it in my reading recently, and so duly noted it on my personal list of new words, only to find that I'd already noted it nearly a decade ago.
How to pronounce '-omeome'? To rhyme with 'home-home' or as 'oh-me-ome'? I note 'proteome' (also not on the list) is pronounced 'pro-te-ome'.
Jonathan Smith said,
June 4, 2025 @ 9:59 pm
@ Apparently that is epi+tome whereas the data science coinage is epit[ope]+ome and I guess pronounced w/ OHM. Why not epitopome one may ask. FWIW the familiar epitome was once semantically close(r) to the OME family, being a textual condensation/abridgment…
Yuval said,
June 5, 2025 @ 1:44 am
You left out the most pertinent one!
Michael Vnuk said,
June 5, 2025 @ 7:05 am
Before I wrote my comment, I did a quick check of 'epitome' in case it also had a biological meaning, but I obviously didn't search as well as Jonathan Smith. Thanks for the clarification.
bks said,
June 5, 2025 @ 7:13 am
The database most academic scientists are interested in is a type of exposome: the "grantome". In commerce, the "vcome".
TA said,
June 5, 2025 @ 8:56 am
It would be great to settle on a reasonably stable set of such terms, but perhaps ome-ostasis will never come.
John McNaught said,
June 5, 2025 @ 8:56 am
The exposome has indeed been of interest to NLP people of late. For a recent-ish narrative review, see Schoene, A.M., Basinas, I., van Tongeren, M. and Ananiadou, S., "A Narrative Literature Review of Natural Language Processing Applied to the Occupational Exposome",
Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2022, 19(14), 8544;
https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph19148544
and for a NE annotated corpus see:
Thompson, P., Ananiadou, S., Basinas, I., Brinchmann, B.C., Cramer, C., Galea, K.S., et al., Supporting the working life exposome: Annotating occupational exposure for enhanced literature search. PLoS ONE 19(8): e0307844, 2024.
https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0307844
Both articles are OA.
Robert Coren said,
June 5, 2025 @ 9:00 am
@Michael Vnuk: I don't think I had that problem with "epitome", but I was an adult before I learned that "harbinger" doesn't rhyme with "singer".
Rodger C said,
June 5, 2025 @ 12:04 pm
Surely an exposome should be a body found at an international fair.
unekdoud said,
June 5, 2025 @ 7:31 pm
I also read it as expo-some (analogous with "chromosome").
Does this omesome feel omesome yet?
bukwyrm said,
June 6, 2025 @ 5:12 am
I hallucinate two different roots for the -omes, to make them more palatable to myself: [Group of features or things in some system, of kind X]: Xome, along the lines of genome; [Group of interactions, situations or happenstances concerning some system, of kind X]: Xome, based of Tome.
So the word proteome hails from genome, while Vaccinome would be based on tome. Wrong, but somehow necessary for my inner peace.