Pathogenomics - Applications

Applications

Many of the future challenges of pathogenomics begin with handling and making sense of the large influx of data that now is available to the research community. Mining the data for useful information proves to be applicable to many facets of epidemiology. Bioinformatics approaches are providing much of the power for rapidly mining, organising, analyzing, visualizing and annotating the data catalogued in databases.

Note that pathogenomics research could shed light for extensions of pathogens, or non-pathogens, that are not related to human, plant or animal health ; using microbes for bioremediation is one example. There is some but very little dialogue, however, concerning these extensions to pathogens and their relation to pathogenomics. It would be more suitable to categorize pathogen/non-pathogen applications that are unrelated to infection under the more general category of microbe genomics. Some general reviews speak extensively both about pathogen related and non-related applications in the same article.

In the advent of new technology, it is easy to forget some of the basic things that prevent pathogen infections from starting and spreading. While there of course exists more deadly and difficult to handle pathogen infections, there do also exist less dangerous ones. Historically, human health greatly improved with more emphasis on healthy life styles including better hygiene practices and access to clean recourses of water and nutrition. While pathogenomics can help provide insights into treatment and detection of some less potent pathogens, it must be kept in mind that there are many pathogens and only so much funding.