Understanding the biology of animal viruses and the physiopathology of animal viral diseases through genomics, proteomics and systems biology

The recent burst in technology which followed the advent of genomic arrays has led to better understanding of the complex inter-relationship between microbes, their hosts and the environment. In addition, holistic approaches to study physiology have made it possible to evaluate the contribution of multiple elements on a single platform. Biology of viruses and their interaction with the host, the pathological consequences of virus infection to the host, and the environmental and host genetic influences on all these are areas of intense investigation. Recent transcriptome and proteome analyses have unearthed a wealth of information on how viruses replicate, survive in the host, spread and cause disease and how the host responds to infection. In this review, we summarize some of the advances in genomic, proteomic and systems biology approaches to understand virus-host interaction and pathogenesis of viral diseases. These studies have broad and important implications for the identification of anti-viral targets and for rational design of clinical interventions.