What is Transcriptome and Why study Transcriptomics?
Transcriptome is the total RNA content of an organism or tissue type. It represented all varieties of RNA and their copies in an organism or tissue. Transcriptome is responsible for active changes seen during the life cycle of an organism. The total content of RNAs varies depending on cell function or environmental conditions. At any given time, there could be thousands of RNA transcripts in an organism that represent the gene expression. The study of RNAs content and sum total of RNA transcripts is called “transcriptomics”. mRNA represents the protein content or level of gene expression while non-coding RNA (ncRNA) do not code of any proteins but perform diverse functions.
Advantages of Transcriptomics
- Transcriptomics is easy with fairly straightforward library preparation and reproducible results.
- Transcriptome analysis enables to assay thousands of genes in parallel.
- Transcriptome analysis a snapshot of transcripts or gene expression at a time point for a tissues or samples.
- Transcriptomics study provides a quick review of gene ontology or pathways involved in a tissues / sample in a given environment.