About this Research Topic

Background

Computational approaches applied to the study of infectious diseases are creating a new research field that takes advantage of the great progress from molecular and structural biology, immunology, bioinformatics and related areas to foster the understanding of infectious diseases and drive innovation in treatment and diagnosis. From a fundamental description of viral and bacterial processes, and their molecular interactions in general, to the design of specific neutralizing antibodies, a diversity of clinical questions can now be addressed by computational methods. Such methods can benefit from the solid foundations that computational molecular simulation methods have achieved to probe the thermodynamic, dynamics and interactive properties of biomolecules in material science, food and pharma together with the promises from machine learning techniques.

Characterization of the molecular aspects of the viral and bacterial assembly, infectivity and pathogenesis are intimately related with new alternatives to diagnosis, prevention and treatment. Other topics such as virus evolutionary dynamics in nature and cell/host-tropism are equally important for innovative strategies on drug design & discovery. These topics are especially timely at the present moment where several countries face outbreaks of different viral infections (e.g. Dengue, Zika) and the ongoing SARS-CoV-2 pandemic.

The aim of the current Research Topic is to cover these topics with an emphasis on novel research trends, especially in coronavirus infections.

This Research Topic welcomes manuscripts around themes including:
• New computational algorithms and methods used to study infectious diseases.
• Development/Application of computational methods to characterize viral and bacterial assembly, infectivity and pathogenesis.
• Development/Application of computational methods to develop novel therapies and diagnostic tools for infectious diseases.
• Development/Application of computational methods to study host-pathogen interactions across different scales, from molecular interactions to interactions between organisms.
• Development/Application of computational methods to study viral assembly, evolutionary aspects and cell/host-tropism.
• Computational methods applied to study virus and bacteria interactions with surfaces.

Keywords: molecular interactions, bioinformatics, antibody development, infectivity, pathology

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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