- Report -
| In Silico Biology 3, 0034 (2003); ©2003, Bioinformation Systems e.V. |
Bioinformatic strategies for better understanding of immune function
Nikolai Petrovsky1,2, Christian Schönbach3 and Vladimir Brusic1,4
1 Centre for Medical Informatics, Division of Science and Design, University of Canberra, Bruce ACT 2617, Australia; email: nikolai.petrovsky@anu.edu.au
2 Autoimmunity Research Unit, The Canberra Hospital, Woden ACT 2606, Australia
3 Biomedical Knowledge Discovery Team, Bioinformatics Group, RIKEN Genomic Sciences Center (GSC), Yokohama 230-0045, Japan; email: schoen@gsc.riken.go.jp
4 Institute for Infocomm Research, 21 Heng Mui Keng Terrace, Singapore 119613; email: vladimir@i2r.a-star.edu.sg
Edited by E. Wingender; received May 20, 2003; revised and accepted June 04, 2003; published June 12, 2003
Abstract
Novartis Foundation sponsored a Symposium which brought together a group of experimental immunologists, theoretical immunologists, and bioinformaticians to discuss the new field of immunoinformatics. The discussion focused on immunological databases, antigen processing and presentation, immunogenomics, host-pathogen interactions, and mathematical modelling of the immune system. A main conclusion of the meeting is the critical role played by immunoinformatics in current immunology research. In particular, immunoinformatics provides a foundation for the emerging fields of systems immunology and immunogenomics.
Key words: antigen processing, antigen presentation, host-pathogen interactions, immunogenomics, immunoinformatics, immunological databases, mathematical models