Integrative Omics for Women’s Health

Abstract

Omics has substantially improved our understanding of women’s health across the life course, revealing novel biological pathways, which are starting to translate into improvements in health and clinical care. In the last 20 years, we have moved from studies of individual genes and their function to investigations of all genes in a genome in a single experiment. By integrating data from the transcriptome, epigenome, and proteome with the underlying genomics, we are able to infer causal pathways to disease and identify potential therapeutic targets for treatment. In this chapter, we will consider each of the omics technologies, including their advantages and limitations. We will discuss examples of how integrated omics has been used in women’s health research across the life course.