Abstract
Emerging and re-emerging viral diseases pose a continuous health threat and disease burden to humans. Research efforts to mitigate the effects of infectious threats, focusing on improved surveillance and diagnostic capabilities, but also on the development of intervention strategies like the use of vaccines and antiviral agents, are crucial. We describe how genomic approaches may aid in mitigating viral threats, by highlighting potential roles and limitations of genomics approaches in virus surveillance and diagnostics, and development of vaccines and antivirals. Keywords antiviral, diagnostics, (emerging) infectious disease, evolution and diversity, gene expression profiling, genome-wide association studies, genome-wide functional screens, host genomics, prevention, surveillance, treatment, viral genomics, virus discovery, vaccine