Geonome is a chance neologism for “genomes of all organisms in a defined geographic location”, coined by me after a discussion with Michael Garvey.
While the term is new (approx March 2015), the concept is not and is rapidly becoming more common with the advent of cheap and easy next generation sequencing.
For nice examples, see Metagenomes of soil and extreme environments on Jill Banfield’s webpage.
Typically an environment of interest is selected and microbial genomes (so far!) are constitutively sequenced and assembled to get genomes of hundreds to thousands of organisms. So, a bacterial metagenome assembly from a serpentine soil sample could be referred to as a Serpentine soil geonome. Or Serpentine soil bacterial geonome. Although currently, its mainly bacterial or fungal genomes that can be mined from such data, one can hope that with steadily improving sequencing and computational approaches, we can foresee larger animals being included into a terrestrial/aquatic/ or marine Geonome.
Term “Geonome” and its plural form “Geonomes” are covered by a CC-BY licence. Do not reproduce without acknowledgment/permission.
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