text: The word "transcriptome" was first used in the 1990s. In 1995, one of the earliest sequencing-based transcriptomic methods was developed, serial analysis of gene expression (SAGE), which worked by Sanger sequencing of concatenated random transcript fragments. Transcripts were quantified by matching the fragments to known genes. A variant of SAGE using high-throughput sequencing techniques, called digital gene expression analysis, was also briefly used. However, these methods were largely overtaken by high throughput sequencing of entire transcripts, which provided additional information on transcript structure such as splice variants.