Bioinformatics: Use in bacterial vaccine discovery

Bioinformatics has now become a common laboratory name for groups studying genomic sequences. It is composed of many different, yet interrelated scien tific fields such as genomics, proteomics, and transcriptional profiling. T he availability of complete genomic sequences, especially prokaryotic organ isms, allows one to rapidly identify, analyze, and clone genes of interest. For bacterial vaccine discovery, one can "mine" the genomic sequence for p otential surface targets using various algorithms, characterize these gene targets', and produce primers for cloning. all before one enters the wet la boratory. This review will focus on various genomic mining tools/algorithms available for predicting open reading frames and their associated annotati on (if known), physical and functional characterization, and cellular local ization. Finally, examples are given of how all of this is being used for t he identification of potential bacteria vaccine candidates.