Point of View: Hypothesis, analysis and synthesis, it's all Greek to me
- University of Crete, Greece
- University of Manchester, United Kingdom
- Hôpital de la Pitié-Salpêtrière, France
- University of Hong Kong, China
- Stanford University, United States
- Erasmus University Medical Center, Netherlands
- Centre for Research & Technology Hellas, Greece
- University of Cyprus, Cyprus
Tables
Table 1
A selection of terms ending with the suffix -some that appear in the scientific literature.
The term prostasome, which first showed up in PubMed in 1982, appeared in 218 PubMed records as of July 28, 2018. However, other terms ending with -some have proved much less popular.
| Term | Definition | Context | Number of PubMed records | Year of first appearance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| catansome | catanionic vesicle | synthetic biochemistry, surfactants | 2 | 2008 |
| ejectisome | extrusive organelle | cell biology and physiology | 16 | 1984 |
| histrosome | a type of ejectisome | cell biology and physiology | 1 | 2015 |
| hyposome | cellular structure | dDinoflagellate biology | 7 | 2010 |
| prostasome | prostate gland vesicle | sperm mobility and physiology | 218 | 1982 |
| remosome | remodeled nucleosome | non-canonical chromatin structure | 2 | 2010 |
Table 2
A selection of terms that combine a Greek preposition and the suffix -genome.
Some terms that the authors believe could be useful in genome biology.
| Preposition | Term | Possible definition/interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| ana | anagenome | could be used to describe usage over time, to monitor population variation |
| amphi | amphigenome | could be used to describe polyploid genomes, and sex differences |
| apo | apogenome | could be used to convey non-DNA large scale analysis |
| dia | diagenome | could be a useful concept for comparative genomics |
| eis | eisgenome | could be a useful term for substance use |
| ek | ecgenome | alternative for exo-genomics (see text) |
| en | engenome | alternative for endo-genomics (see text) |
| kata | katagenome | could be a vey useful term to describe developmental processes over time |
| para | paragenome | could be used to describe the genomics of paralogs (although this is not satisfactory from an etymological point of view) |
| peri | perigenome | could be a very useful term to describe developmental processes over space |
| pros | prosgenome | could be used to describe synthetic genomes |
| syn | syngenome | could be used to describe the genomics of symbioses |
| hypo | hypogenome | could be used to describe a synthetic genome with depleted functions – as opposed to hyper-genome to describe a synthetic genome with added functions |
Additional files
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Supplementary file 1
The 243 words that appear in at least one million PubMed records.
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43514.004
-
Supplementary file 2
The 172 words with rich meaning (nouns, adjectives and verb forms) that appear in at least one million PubMed records. A part-of-speech tagger was used to classify the words under consideration (https://cst.dk/tools/index.php).
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43514.005
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Supplementary file 3
The 152 words with rich meaning and four or more characters that appear in at least one million PubMed records.
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43514.006
-
Supplementary file 4
A search string containing the 152 words with rich meaning and four or more characters that appear in at least one million PubMed records. The search that excludes the 15 Greek terms is generated automatically at the following URL: https://tinyurl.com/y7kflbcb
- https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43514.007
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Point of View: Hypothesis, analysis and synthesis, it's all Greek to me
eLife 8:e43514.
https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.43514
