Computational immunogenetics

Computational immunogenetics encompasses the use and application of bioinformatics methods, mathematical models and statistical techniques for the study of immune system function. The considerable heterogeneity of the immune system requires systems approaches to be used to model such a complexity and to respond to questions posed by biomedical audience to help them solve biomedical questions. Computational approaches are increasingly vital to understand the implications of the wealth of gene expression and epigenomics data being gathered from immune cells, and dozens of immune databases play a vital role in organizing the vast quantities of experimental data generated by modern high-throughput technologies. Multi-scale methodologies are increasingly being used to characterise the interplay between the molecular, cellular and organism levels of the immune system. Finally, computational immunology is making an important contribution to an emerging field of computational biomedicine: in silico clinical trials.