Computational Analysis of Virus–Host Interactomes

High-throughput methods for screening of physical and functional interactions now provide the means to study virus-host interactions on a genome scale. The limited coverage of these methods and the large size and uncertain quality of the identified interaction sets, however, require sophisticated computational approaches to obtain novel insights and hypotheses on virus infection processes from these interactions. Here, we describe the central steps of bioinformatics methods applied most commonly for this task and highlight important aspects that need to be considered and potential pitfalls that should be avoided.