Can interaction between traditional experimentation and quantitative analysis derive new insight? Laboratory research has progressed from a traditional focus on individual molecules or processes to an environment where high-throughput quantitative analytical approaches (e.g. next generation sequencing, quantitative proteomics, cytokine and transcript expression multiplexing) measure multiple infection components in parallel. This greatly increases the potential to interpret experiments at a system scale, through quantitative analysis and modelling. However, we believe that a key requirement of this interpretative power is a well-grounded knowledge of the biological system, enabling appropriate assumptions to be built into models and outputs to be identified that reflect established knowledge. At the molecular level, this improves the ability to identify and target pathogen processes; at the population level it helps to predict the impact of control strategies against pathogens. This article was published on 2025-03-12
