Interactions shaping the interactome

Infectious diseases continue to remain a global threat despite a century of prevention and control efforts causing a huge number of mortality cases every year. Evidently, the COVID-19 pandemic has devastatingly impacted our lives and society. The preventative and therapeutic measures will require a deep exploration of pathogens, hosts, and the dynamic interactions between them over the period of infection. Dissecting the independent molecular mechanisms at multiple levels underlying any infections have become more efficient with advancements in next-generation sequencing technologies which have enabled us to the exploration of patient clinical samples in a real-world setting. Subsequently, an enormous amount of SARS-CoV-2 genome surveillance worldwide was more feasible, and insights into the viral genome architecture enabled us in the quick designing of vaccines during the pandemic and global administration. Hence, a comprehensive understanding of the distinct stages of infections will aid us in the development of targeted therapeutics and vaccines to ameliorate the disease progression thereby reducing the severe outcomes inclusive of mortality. Herein through this chapter, we highlight the different components of host–pathogen interactions, different tools to study the dynamics of host–pathogen interactions, the importance of tracking the evolution of pathogens by genome surveillance, with the associated challenges and future perspectives.