The study of the entire set of oligosaccharides (i.e. the glycome) synthesized by an organism. Many proteins undergo addition of short chains of sugar residues as part of their post-translational processing. This glycosylation can involve different oligosaccharides at various sites on proteins—the totality of which is the proteoglycome; it is crucial to effective protein functioning in many areas of metabolism, including cell signalling and cell recognition. The function of glycolipids is also influenced by their component oligosaccharide chains. Glycomics seeks to develop automated high-throughput techniques for identifying and quantifying these oligosaccharides and methods of analysing and storing such data. These data can then be integrated with observed patterns of gene expression (from genomics) and protein synthesis (from proteomics) to yield information about how and why the glycome varies during, for example, development or disease.