Mapping the exposome

More than 20 years ago, I posted about the explosion of -ome and -omic words in biology: "-ome is where the heart is", 10/27/2004. I listed more than 40 examples:

behaviourome, cellome, clinome, complexome, cryptome, crystallome, ctyome, degradome, enzymome,epigenome, epitome, expressome, fluxome, foldome, functome, glycome, immunome, ionome, interactome, kinome, ligandome, localizome, metallome, methylome, morphome, nucleome, ORFeome, parasitome, peptidome, phenome, phostatome, physiome, regulome, saccharome, secretome, signalome, systeome, toponome, toxicome, translatome, transportome, vaccinome, and variome.

Plenty of important examples were left off that list, for example proteome.

One -ome example that I recently learned is exposome, whose meaning should be obvious, but is lucidly explained in a 2005 paper by Christopher Wild, which Wiktionary credits with coining the term —  "Complementing the genome with an 'exposome': the outstanding challenge of environmental exposure measurement in molecular epidemiology":

Partially as a consequence of the emphasis on genotyping, the accurate assessment of many environmental exposures remains an outstanding and largely unmet challenge in cancer epidemiology. As measurement of one half of the gene:environment equation continues to be refined, the other remains subject to a large degree of misclassification. […]

The imbalance in measurement precision of genes and environment has consequences, most fundamentally in compromising the ability to fully derive public health benefits from expenditure on the human genome and the aforementioned cohort studies. There is a desperate need to develop methods with the same precision for an individual's environmental exposure as we have for the individual's genome. I would like to suggest that there is need for an “exposome” to match the “genome.” This concept of an exposome may be useful in drawing attention to the need for methodologic developments in exposure assessment.

The OED has yet to award exposome its Word Induction Ceremony,  although Google Scholar estimates 45,000 hits.