Advances in bioinformatics and multi-omics integration: transforming viral infectious disease research in veterinary medicine

Abstract

The world is changing due to factors like bioterrorism, massive environmental changes, globalization of trade and commerce, growing urbanization, changing climate, and pollution. Numerous diseases have emerged because of these factors, especially in companion and food-producing animals. Numerous pathogens have established themselves in naïve populations, harming reproduction, productivity, and health. Bioinformatics is considered a valuable tool in infectious disease research, as it provides a comprehensive overview of the identification of pathogens, their genetic makeup, and their evolutionary relationship. Therefore, there is an urgent need for a novel bioinformatics approach to help decipher and model viral epidemiology and informatics on domestic animals and livestock. With significant advancements in bioinformatics and NGS, researchers can now identify contigs, which are contiguous sequences of DNA that are assembled from overlapping fragments, assemble a complete genome, perform phylogenetic analysis to diagnose, investigate the risk of viral diseases in animals, handle and share large biological datasets across various species. Additionally, multi-omics data integration further deepens our understanding of homology, divergence, mutations, and evolutionary relationships, providing a comprehensive perspective on the molecular mechanisms driving animal pathogens infections. This review aims to reveal the importance of utilizing the multidisciplinary areas of bioinformatics, genomics, proteomics, transcriptomics, metabolomics, and metagenomics and their roles in studying viral infectious diseases in veterinary medicine that will eventually improve the health of animals.