Novel Applications of Computational Biology in Infectious Disease Interventions

Interventions in infectious diseases are increasingly relying on computational biology and genomic methods. Estimating changes in viral genetic diversity in a population could be a new potential method to evaluate vaccination strategies in populations. Transgenic mosquitoes immune to a pathogen are being developed to replace the native mosquito vector of a number of vector-borne diseases. High throughput methods are being used to elucidate mechanisms of immune memory with the promise of developing better vaccines. Large-scale computer simulation models are useful for exploring interventions and could benefit from input from network and graph theory. In this talk, we discuss a few novel applications of computational biology in understanding infectious diseases and interventions.