Since 1995 the whole genomes of an increasing number of bacterial species has been
described and this has opened up the so-called ‘-omics’ technologies (Lederberg and McCray, 2001), which cover the areas of
genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics (Kiechle and Holland-Staley, 2003). These -omic techniques along with
microarray and sequencing can be used to generate microbial pathogen profiling for management and surveillance (Sintchenko
et al., 2007) that play roles in classification, metabolism, pathogenesis, genetics, host responses, epidemiology, diagnosis and
treatment of medical microbiology (Figure 1).