Glycomers, term

In most cases, the precise functions of polysaccharides are not known even their primary sequences are very hard to determine using current analytical techniques. Thus, a major challenge is to crack the carbohydrate code and determine the structures and functions of all the polysaccharides found on human cells. Terms such as glycomics have already been coined to describe such global efforts. 

Thus, all aspects of glycobiology, now often termed glycomics, are still not so well understood than its two counterparts, genomics and proteomics, dealing with nucleic acids and proteins. 

The goal to approach biologically relevant complex mixtures could be followed more clearly only since 1999, when the term glycomics was coined, as desaibed below. 

In the discussion of biomarker discovery a number of omics terms have been used to divide the types of biomolecules into different fields metabolomics, lipidomics, glycomics, proteomics, etc. This has some usefulness in defining what one is looking for, but unfortunately biology is not that simple. In many cases natural lines do not really exist between different types of biomolecules. 

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