[iv_ka_metalife]

Bioinformatics and Phenomics

Phenomics is the study of the nature of phenotypes and how they are determined, particularly when studied in relation to the set of all genes (genomics) or all proteins (proteomics). Just as the genome and proteome signify all of an organism's genes and proteins, the phenome represents the sum total of its phenotypic traits. Bioinformatics, as in any other field, helps analyze, structure and organize data.

One successful attempt to integrate the constantly growing and scattered phenotypic data is the PhenomicDB (phenomicdb.de)

It's a free multi-organism phenotype-genotype database unifying a variety of primary sources to make phenotypic data from a wide range of species and model organisms simultaneously searchable, visible and comparable. Reported genotype-phenotype relationships are supported by literature evidence, reference links and citations. Each genotype, as well as each phenotype is characterized by varied descriptions allowing more detailed facts exploration.
The phenotypic data clusters mapped to each entry could help further analyze similar phenotypes/diseases caused by different genes or mutations. The gene orthology information appended to each entry could help suggest a known phenotype/disease to a new or orphan genotype/mutation and thus predict a new unreported phenotypic manifestation.