Pathogen proteomes during infection: A basis for infection research and novel control strategies

Infectious diseases cause tremendous mortality and morbidity worldwide. Rising antimicrobial resistance and the lack of new drugs cause an increasingly alarming crisis in infectious disease control. New system-level approaches are likely to help understand complex host/pathogen interactions as a basis for rational development of novel antibiotics and vaccines. Proteome analysis of pathogens in infected tissues comprehensively reveals functionally relevant pathogen activities during infection. It also highlights potential targets for antimicrobial chemotherapy as well as promising antigens for vaccination. Integration of these data with complementary large-scale data helps to further prioritize candidates for in-depth experimental analysis. Here, I discuss some of these approaches with a special emphasis on the model pathogen Salmonella.