INFORMATICS-DRIVEN INFECTIOUS DISEASE RESEARCH

Informatics-driven approaches change how research and development are conducted, who participates, and enable systems-oriented views science and research. The Cyber Infrastructure Division of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech is a highly transdisciplinary, informatics-based team that researches, develops, deploys and uses information systems in support of diverse communities, with a strong historical and current focus in infectious diseases (ID). Most life sciences researchers have a very strong desire for the full integration of data and analysis tools delivered through a single interface. Data analysis, visualization, interpretation, and integration from the perspective of a given research community and its interests is best handled through specific and close interaction with that community and interoperation with major comprehensive data resources, such as those at EMBL or NCBI. ID research and development provides a uniquely challenging and high impact opportunity to develop resources that interoperate (syntax) with comprehensive resources while integrating (semantics) various types of data and analysis systems for the specific needs of a global community. The biological complexity of infectious disease systems, which are composed of multiple scales of interactions between potential pathogens, hosts (and vectors) and the environment, challenges information resources because of the breadth of organism-organism and organism-environment interactions that are needed to understand outcomes such as disease, asymptomatic carrying, and disease resistance. Beyond research, applications of integrated data for ID serves a variety of constituencies, such as clinical, diagnostic, drug and vaccine development, and epidemiological, which are very important applied areas of data utilization. Thus there is a complexity represented by the data users and their needs and workflows, making ID an opportune area in which to develop, deploy and use CyberInfrastructure.