Computational Tools for Investigating Pathogen, Pathogen-Host Interaction, and Infectious Disease

Recent developments of high-throughput sequencing technologies and systems biology methods open novel opportunities to investigate pathogen, pathogen-host interactions, and infectious diseases at system-wide scales. For example, the tool antigenic map has been adopted by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US to help select vaccine strains for seasonal influenza each year. Disease transmission models have been used to study and help inform public health interventions for a few infectious diseases for human and animals. However, the clinical application of computational tools is still on its early stage. With more and more data available for pathogens and their hosts at genome, transcriptome, proteome, methylome, and epigenome levels, computational modelling, big data analysis, and systems biology have become more and more important in revealing the biological mechanisms underlying these data, unraveling the secrets behind pathogen evolution, infection, and pathogen-host interactions