How does reverse vaccinology work? And how is it better than conventional vaccinology approaches?

Question

How does reverse vaccinology work? And how is it better than conventional vaccinology approaches?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Reverse vaccinology is a computer-based search technique. You take the entire genome of a pathogen, and search for instructions that code for proteins similar to ones we’ve previously made vaccines to target. Then you try to target those features.

Sometimes nothing happens, because the pathogen turns off the gene that has been targeted, but sometimes it works. The advantage is that because of big computers, you can look at lots of possible solutions in parallel.

Conventional techniques find the unusual part of the pathogen, and then try to find a way to target that. Alas, this is a serial process, failures targeting part A don’t tell you anything about targeting B.