An overview of proteomic and metabolomic technologies and their application to pregnancy research

'Omic' technologies represent a strategy towards high-throughput, simultaneous analysis of thousands of biological molecules. Their development has been accelerated in the post-genomic era since these molecules represent the interaction of genes and environment or the 'functional genome'. Omic domains are of particular interest in the search for predictive disease biomarkers and have additional relevance in understanding pathophysiology and the development of molecularly targeted therapeutics. This review examines the fields of proteomics and metabolomics in the context of obstetrics and gynaecology, including a discussion of methodology, challenges, potential applications and current research.