The Secretome

Happy Turkey Day!! As a special gift, I give you yet another -ome to spread on your Thanksgiving bird. You see, I'm fascinated by -omics, the idea that you can affix "-ome" to your favorite biological system to prime the hype machine. And what I have for you this time makes me think of the juices of a turkey that's been cooked just right.

With that in mind, I give you the secretome. From what I can gather, these are the proteins secreted by an organism. The authors of the article linked above are interested in the evolution of the mollusk shell, but mice, humans, pufferfish, and pigs all have secretomes. The mouse paper defines the secretome as "the set of soluble proteins secreted into the extracellular environment of a cell."

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