HOST-PATHOGEN INTERACTIONS

 Host-pathogen interactions are vital to our understanding of communicable disease, also as its treatment and prevention. Through the investigation and analysis of the various stages of infection, the mechanisms by which pathogens invade and proliferate in their hosts are often elucidated. Bioinformatics has and can still play an outsized role in expanding our knowledge during this field, especially within the post-genomic era with the arrival of extremely large datasets. Traditional alignment methods, structural analysis, and machine learning methods are all essential to furthering our understanding of host-pathogen interactions, and the way such interactions are often exploited to treat disease. The event of novel drugs, vaccines and other therapeutics going into the longer term are going to be highly hooked in to the knowledge gained from investigating host-pathogen interactions. There’s still work to be wiped out collating and curating data within the field despite significant recent efforts, and this presents an ongoing challenge which must be addressed.