Genomics is the study of genomes — the work of reading, comparing, and trying to understand the full set of genes in living things. Genetics is the older, wider study of how traits pass down; genomics is the newer “whole book” version that grew when machines could read huge stretches of DNA at once. It is a university, lab, and industry word — you will see it as a subject name, like physics. Though actually, the line is a bit messy: many people still say genetics for work that is really genomics, and -omics has become a fashion ending for other “whole-set” studies too. The core of this word stays the genome.