The availability of complete genome sequences is a prerequisite for postgenomic studies or "functional genomics", covering diverse fields as transcriptomics (study of cellular mRNA composition with the help of DNA microarrays), proteomics (investigation of the cellular protein composition and research on protein-protein interactions), structural genomics (a new type of research that focuses on high-throughput, whole genome analysis), chemical genetics (studies on small molecules which selectively disturb protein interactions) and computational genomics (analysis of the unprecedenced amount of data generated by these studies).
In the next couple of years, phylogenomic studies represent a novel area of research within the framework of functional genomics. Phylogenomics will be an important field of study because it unifies all areas of biology, just as evolutionary biology does.
Research in phylogenomics includes development of algorithms optimized for phylogenomics. Furthermore, Bork et al. (1) postulated that the prediction of the function of proteins should be performed with respect to "higher order" processes (e.g. regulation of gene expression, metabolic pathways, signal transduction cascades). Additional information originating from transcriptomics and proteomics will be included in this process (1). These statements are an important aspect for the concept of phylogenomics.
Several areas of potential commercialization of phylogenomic data include: