Since its launch in 1990, the Human Genome Project has earned worldwide admiration, racked up $437 million in US government funding, and even landed its own day (April 25 is National DNA Day). But the genome alone can't explain how our bodies work. For that, you need to decode a lot of other "-omes" — all the complex biological systems that regulate how we develop. (The suffix is borrowed from the word chromosome, but scientists have gotten pretty fast and loose with it.) Tracking them all requires an omeome.

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