Editorial: Proteomics of Microbial Human Pathogens

Despite remarkable advances in treatment and prevention, infectious diseases remain amongst the leading causes of death worldwide, particularly in the developing world, and drug resistant pathogens are ominously on the rise. By way of one specific example, the global incidence of human tuberculosis (TB) disease—caused by infection with the pathogen Mycobacterium tuberculosis—is estimated to be ∼9 million new cases (∼0.1% of the global population) per annum, causing 1.5–2 million deaths per annum and with an estimated 450,000 people developing multi-drug resistant tuberculosis each year); moreover, the WHO estimates that ∼1/3rd of the World's population carries a latent M. tuberculosis infection, thus representing a huge reservoir of potential future TB cases. In the context of this Research Topic, it is also relevant that the burden of TB disease is very uneven globally, with certain countries in Africa having a much higher incidence than observed in the developed world—for example, in South Africa the national incidence of TB disease is around 1% of the population and a single city, Cape Town, reports more cases of TB annually than the whole of North America and Europe combined. Furthermore, roughly 21% of all deaths in South Africa are associated with TB disease today, despite proactive efforts at TB control since the beginning of the twentieth century and despite the TB control program in Cape Town achieving 75% case finding and 85% completion rates for smear positive disease. Similarly depressing statistics abound for numerous other infectious diseases in the developing world, with disease burden being driven by both microbial adaption (to drug resistance and to differing ecologies), as well as by the emergence of new, often zoonotic pathogens (e.g., ebola and zika viruses). According to the World Health Organization (WHO), infectious diseases today account for more than 70% of premature deaths across 22 African countries (Who, 2014), with co-infections, for example with HIV or helminths, being rife. It is therefore critical that we develop new molecular knowledge now that will inform new strategies in the global fight against human microbial pathogens—including those that are not prevalent in the developed world—with the use of state-of-the art " omics " technologies set to take center-stage through providing a detailed understanding of the mechanistic basis of pathogenicity and by creating a comprehensive description of the molecular interplays that mediate host-pathogen interactions. During the last two decades, powerful high throughput research platforms—namely genomics, transcriptomics, and proteomics—have contributed significantly to …