Omics: Applications in Biomedical, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences

With the advent of new technologies and acquired knowledge, the number of fields in omics and their applications in diverse areas are rapidly increasing in the postgenomics era. Such emerging fields—including pharmacogenomics, toxicogenomics, regulomics, spliceomics, metagenomics, and environomics—present budding solutions to combat global challenges in biomedicine, agriculture, and the environment. OMICS: Applications in Biomedical, Agricultural, and Environmental Sciences provides valuable insights into the applications of modern omics technologies to real-world problems in the life sciences. Filling a gap in the literature, it offers a broad, multidisciplinary view of current and emerging applications of omics in a single volume.

Written by highly experienced active researchers, each chapter describes a particular area of omics and the associated technologies and applications. Topics covered include:

• Proteomics, epigenomics, and pharmacogenomics
• Toxicogenomics and the assessment of environmental pollutants
• Applications of plant metabolomics
• Nutrigenomics and its therapeutic applications
• Microalgal omics and omics approaches in biofuel production
• Next-generation sequencing and omics technology for transgenic plant analysis
• Omics approaches in crop improvement
• Engineering dark-operative chlorophyll synthesis
• Computational regulomics
• Omics techniques for the analysis of RNA splicing
• New fields, including metagenomics, glycomics, and miRNA
• Breast cancer biomarkers for early detection
• Environomics strategies for environmental sustainability

This timely book explores a wide range of omics application areas in the biomedical, agricultural, and environmental sciences. Throughout, it highlights working solutions as well as open problems and future challenges. Demonstrating the diversity of omics, it introduces readers to state-of-the-art developments and trends in omics-driven research.

Debmalya Barh is the founder and president of the Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB), India, a global platform for multidisciplinary research and advocacy. He is a consultant biotechnologist and has more than 12 years of rich experience in interdisciplinary omics fields. His research areas include integrative omics–based translational researches, target and targeted drug discovery, biomarkers, pharmacogenomics, neutrigenomics, cancer, neuroscience, cardiovascular diseases, infectious and metabolic diseases, and plant, animal, and environmental biotechnology. As an active scientist in the field, he works with nearly 200 researchers from more than 80 institutes across 25 countries. He has edited a number of research reference books in the areas of omics, biomarkers, and other advanced domains in biology. He also serves as an editorial and review board member for several professional international research journals of global repute.

Vasudeo Zambare is a biochemist. He previously worked at Agharkar Research Institute, India, and the Center for Bioprocessing Research and Development at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, USA. His current research concentrates on the use of omics technologies in agriculture, functional food, and environmental sciences. He has published more than 150 peer-reviewed articles and is editor-in-chief, technical editor, associate editor, editorial board member, or advisory member of more than 80 international research journals. He is a fellow member of several international societies, including the Institute of Integrative Omics and Applied Biotechnology (IIOAB).

Vasco Azevedo is a full professor in molecular biology and genetics at the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil. He is a pioneer scientist in lactic acid bacteria and Corynebacterium pseudotuberculosis and a well-known scientist in bacterial genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics. His research also involves omics approaches in livestock and agricultural biotechnology in the development of new omics-based vaccines and diagnostics against infectious diseases. He has published 160 research articles and 15 book chapters. He is an associate editor of several journals, including Genetics and Molecular Research, Microbial Cell Factories, and The IIOAB Journal, and an editorial board member of a number of international journals.