transcriptome

The transcriptome is the set of all RNA molecules (transcripts) in a cell or a population of cells. It includes all of the functional RNA molecules and all other transcripts that may arise by spurious transcription or transcription of non-functional regions such as pseudogenes or virus fragments. A major goal of modern molecular biology is to determine which transcripts are functional and which ones are junk RNA.

The term transcriptome is a portmanteau of the words transcript and genome; it is associated with the process of transcript production during the biological process of transcription. The functional part of the transcriptome is dynamic — it changes with cell type, developmental stage, environment, and stimuli — and therefore represents the active gene expression state rather than the static DNA sequence (genome).