Immuno-informatics: Mining genomes for vaccine components

The complete genome sequences of more than 60 microbes have beencompleted in the past decade. Concurrently, a series of new informaticstools, designed to harness this new wealth of information, havebeen developed. Some of these new tools allow researchers to selectregions of microbial genomes that trigger immune responses. Theseregions, termed epitopes, are ideal components of vaccines. Whenthe new tools are used to search for epitopes, this search is usuallycoupled with in vitro screening methods; an approach thathas been termed computational immunology or immuno-informatics.Researchers are now implementing these combined methods to scangenomic sequences for vaccine components. They are thereby expandingthe number of different proteins that can be screened for vaccinedevelopment, while narrowing this search to those regions of theproteins that are extremely likely to induce an immune response.As the tools improve, it may soon be feasible to skip over manyof the in vitro screening steps, moving directly from genomesequence to vaccine design. The present article reviews the workof several groups engaged in the development of immuno-informaticstools and illustrates the application of these tools to the processof vaccine discovery.