Worst new omics word award: circomics – running circles around my head

Wow – this is really not a good “omics” word.  Check out this paper title and it’s abstract Circular DNA genomics (circomics) exemplified for g… [Virology. 2012] – PubMed – NCBI

Circomics was coined to describe the combination of rolling circle amplification (RCA), restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) and pyro-sequencing to investigate the genome structures of small circular DNAs. A batch procedure is described using 61 plant samples from Asia, South America and Central America which revealed 83 contig sequences of geminiviral DNA components and 4 contig sequences of DNA satellites. The usefulness of this approach is validated for the Brazilian begomoviruses, and the sequence fidelity is determined by comparing the results with those of conventional cloning and sequencing of Bolivian begomoviruses reported recently. Therefore, circomics has been proven to be a major step forward to economize costs and labor and to characterize reliably geminiviral genomes in their population structure of the quasi species.

This definitely fits the category of a “bad omics” word which I have history of complaining about but had been ignoring for a bit.  But I am back.  I am giving “Circomics” a “Worst New Omics Word Award” here because, well, it seems completely unnecessary and distracting.

Hat tip to AJ Cann for pointing this one out on Google Plus.

Author: Jonathan Eisen

I am an evolutionary biologist and a Professor at U. C. Davis. (see my lab site here). My research focuses on the origin of novelty (how new processes and functions originate). To study this I focus on sequencing and analyzing genomes of organisms, especially microbes and using phylogenomic analysis View all posts by Jonathan Eisen