Trends in biomedical engineering: focus on Genomics and Proteomics

Genomics is the study of an organism’s genome aimed at the functional specification of the different parts of the sequence that comprise the blueprint of the living cell to unveil the mechanisms of the physiology of the cell and its basic, developmental, and tissue-specific processes. Proteomics is the comprehensive study of the executive molecules of the cell coded by the genome, further raising the level of complexity, because of the large amplification in the number, going from genes to proteins, and to the sophisticated structural and functional characterization of protein products, which confer specific biochemical properties. While continuous progress in technology provides new experimental solutions to study and measure the behavior of genes and proteins in the cell, the analysis and the management of biological data cannot be uncoupled from the use of mathematics, statistics, and informatics disciplines that play a key role in modern molecular biology.Together, genomics and proteomics, meant as complementary approaches, delineate the framework of modern molecular medicine, where the knowledge of the functional mechanisms on a subcellular scale, both under physiologic and pathologic conditions, may lead to an improvement in diagnosis, therapy, and drug development.