The use of genomics in microbial vaccine development

Vaccination is one of the most effective tools for the prevention of infectious diseases. The availability of complete genome sequences, together with the progression of high-throughput technologies such as functional and structural genomics, has led to a new paradigm in vaccine development. Pan-genomic reverse vaccinology, with the comparison of sequence data from multiple isolates of the same species of a pathogen, increases the opportunity of the identification of novel vaccine candidates. Overall, the conventional empiric approach to vaccine development is being replaced by vaccine design. The recent development of synthetic genomics may provide a further opportunity to design vaccines.