Omic Sciences: New Horizons in Food Allergy
In 18th–19th Centuries, 'scientific' medicine evolved under the influence of Empiricism, Rationalism, and Enlightenment. Sciences including entomology, zoology, chemistry, and botanics penetrated the intrinsic order of creation and transferred their discoveries into monumental taxonomic hierarchies. In parallel, medicine took advantage of the discoveries of other sciences and evolved as a 'taxonomy of the diseases'. The botanist, physician, and zoologist Carolus Linnaeus, the physician and botanist Francois Boissier de Sauvages, and the psychiatrist Philippe Pinel developed an early classification of physical illnesses, giving life to modern pathology. In that context, the emphasis was on disease itself. A cadre of clinicians, however, did not forget that each person could develop the same disease in different ways, warning colleagues to give attention to the person rather than the disease. With the discoveries of the new millennium highlighting individual differences in the manifestation of disease, the debate between 'holistic' and 'scientific' medicine, often philosophical and even ideological, and traditionally a discussion within medical epistemology, has become public again.
One of the most important scientific achievements in the last 20 years has been the Human Genome Project. With the completion of the mapping of the human genome, geneticists executed the dreams of Linnaeus, Darwin, Watson, and Crick. However, well before its conception, it was clear that the axiom 'one gene – one enzyme – one disease' was able to explain only a minute part of human pathology. The majority of conditions, including allergic diseases, are complex and heterogeneous: allergenic, environmental and microbial exposures are crucial in modifying the expression of genetic predispositions. In addition, after the achievements of genomics, there has been an explosion of other '-omic' sciences: transcriptomics, epigenomics, microbiomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and exposomics. Collectively, these sciences are redefining modern medicine. This issue of Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology is dedicated to the horizons that these sciences are opening in food allergy.
Introduction
In 18th–19th Centuries, 'scientific' medicine evolved under the influence of Empiricism, Rationalism, and Enlightenment. Sciences including entomology, zoology, chemistry, and botanics penetrated the intrinsic order of creation and transferred their discoveries into monumental taxonomic hierarchies. In parallel, medicine took advantage of the discoveries of other sciences and evolved as a 'taxonomy of the diseases'. The botanist, physician, and zoologist Carolus Linnaeus, the physician and botanist Francois Boissier de Sauvages, and the psychiatrist Philippe Pinel developed an early classification of physical illnesses, giving life to modern pathology. In that context, the emphasis was on disease itself. A cadre of clinicians, however, did not forget that each person could develop the same disease in different ways, warning colleagues to give attention to the person rather than the disease. With the discoveries of the new millennium highlighting individual differences in the manifestation of disease, the debate between 'holistic' and 'scientific' medicine, often philosophical and even ideological, and traditionally a discussion within medical epistemology, has become public again.
One of the most important scientific achievements in the last 20 years has been the Human Genome Project. With the completion of the mapping of the human genome, geneticists executed the dreams of Linnaeus, Darwin, Watson, and Crick. However, well before its conception, it was clear that the axiom 'one gene – one enzyme – one disease' was able to explain only a minute part of human pathology. The majority of conditions, including allergic diseases, are complex and heterogeneous: allergenic, environmental and microbial exposures are crucial in modifying the expression of genetic predispositions. In addition, after the achievements of genomics, there has been an explosion of other '-omic' sciences: transcriptomics, epigenomics, microbiomics, proteomics, metabolomics, and exposomics. Collectively, these sciences are redefining modern medicine. This issue of Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology is dedicated to the horizons that these sciences are opening in food allergy.
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