Journal of Bioterrorism & Biodefense
Open Access

Review Article

Biodefense Oriented Genomic-Based Pathogen Classification Systems: Challenges and Opportunities

Willy A Valdivia-Granda^*

Orion Integrated Biosciences Inc., New York, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Willy A Valdivia-Granda
Orion Integrated Biosciences Inc.
265 Centre Ave, Suite 1
New Rochelle NY 10805
New York, USA
E-mail: willy.valdivia@orionbiosciences.com

Received Date: June 14, 2011; Accepted Date: March 08, 2012; Published Date: March 16, 2012

Citation: Valdivia-Granda WA (2012) Biodefense Oriented Genomic-Based Pathogen Classification Systems: Challenges and Opportunities. J Bioterr Biodef 3:113. doi: 10.4172/2157-2526.1000113

Copyright: © 2012 Valdivia-Granda WA. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Countermeasures that will effectively prevent or diminish the impact of a biological attack will depend on the rapid and accurate generation and analysis of genomic information. Because of their increasing level of sensitivity, rapidly decreasing cost, and their ability to effectively interrogate the genomes of previously unknown organisms, Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) technologies are revolutionizing the biological sciences. However, the exponential accumulation microbial data is equally outpacing the computational performance of existing analytical tools in their ability to translate DNA information into reliable detection, prophylactic and therapeutic countermeasures. It is now evident that the bottleneck for next-generation sequence data analysis will not be solved simply by scaling up our computational resources, but rather accomplished by implementing novel biodefense-oriented algorithms that overcome exiting vulnerabilities of speed, sensitivity and accuracy. Considering these circumstances, this document highlights the challenges and opportunities that biodefense stakeholders must consider in order to exploit more efficiently genomic information and translate this data into integrated countermeasures. The document overviews different genome analysis methods and explains concepts of DNA fingerprints, motif fingerprints, genomic barcodes and genomic signatures. A series of recommendations to promote genomics and bioinformatics as an effective form of deterrence and a valuable scientific platform for rapid technological insertion of detection, prophylactic, therapeutic countermeasures are discussed.