Interpretation and Application of Terms Related to Phenomics of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Phenomics has been emerging as a new discipline for the study of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), including zhenghou patterns and fang-ji. As imported terms, "phenotype", "phenome", and "phenomics" combined with the original TCM terms have derived new terminologies such as TCM phenotype, zhenghou phenotype, zhenghou phenome, zhenghou phenomics, fu-fang pharmacophenomics, fangjiomics etc. In recent years, investigators have made conceptual interpretations of relevant terms of TCM phenomics to develop a research system of TCM phenomics. However, this also resulted in problems and confusions with the misalignment of concepts, misuse of terms, and view discrepancies. It is therefore necessary to clarify the original sources of terminologies and analyze the terminologies in-depth to establish unified concepts and terminologies at the beginning of the development of the discipline and lay a solid foundation for the development of the discipline of TCM phenomics.