User:Ruiolivetree/Cell functional enviromics

'Cell functional enviromics'

Cell functional enviromics is a field in molecular and cell biology that studies the function of environmental factors in phenotype development of living cells [1]. The main objective in functional enviromics is bridging environmental factors and function through the collection and analysis of dynamic envirome data. The main principles are:

i) Finding the whole set of cellular functions ii) Finding the whole set of envirome components iii) Collecting envirome dynamic data upon genetic or environmental perturbation iv) Systems level analysis of dynamic envirome data to find relationships between envirome components and cellular functions.

Cell functional enviromics is complementary to functional genomics. While function genomics studies the function of genes, functional enviromics studies the function of environmental factors. While functional genomics searches for the function of genes through the collection of transcriptome or proteome dynamic data, functional enviromics searches the function of environment through the collection and analysis of envirome dynamc data.

A key characteristic of functional enviromics is the envirome-wide approach. Instead of looking for the effect of isolated environmental factors on cellular function, it studies the whole set of envirome components and the whole set of cellualar functions simultaneously, thus avoiding the reduction of system complexity. This technique requires high-throughput envirome characterization methods, such as NMR and MS based exo-metabolomics techniques.


References

edit
  1. ^ Teixeira, A.P., Dias, J., Carinhas, N., Sousa, M., Clemente, J., Cunha, A., von Stosch, M., Alves, P.M., Carrondo, M.J.T., Oliveira, R., Cell functional enviromics: unravelling the function of environmental factors, BMC Systems Biology 2011, 5:92
edit