Phylogenomics

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. The study that combines the analysis of genetic data across entire genomes to understand the evolutionary relationships among species and the history of their genetic traits
2. An interdisciplinary field that uses whole-genome sequencing and computational methods to reconstruct the evolutionary pathways and lineage connections among organisms
3. A scientific approach that integrates genomic information with evolutionary biology to infer phylogenetic trees and uncover the genetic basis of evolutionary processes

Etymology: Phylogenomics is a compound built from two parts, and the first one reaches back to a very old root. "Phylo-" comes from Ancient Greek "phûlon", meaning tribe, race or kind, which is itself tied to "phúō", "to grow" or "to produce". That same ancestry gives English "phylum" and "phylogeny", the reconstruction of how species descended from one another. The second part, "genomics", is the study of genomes, the complete sets of an organism's genetic material. Joining the two gives a term for analysing whole genomes to work out evolutionary relationships. The word is a modern scientific coinage assembled from these parts, not a term that the ancient Greeks would have recognised.

Synonyms: evolutionary genomics