Like many words, the term "immunomics" equates to different ideas contingent on context. For a brief span, immunomics meant the study of the Immunome, of which there were, in turn, several different definitions. A now largely defunct meaning rendered the Immunome as the set of antigenic peptides or immunogenic proteins within a single microorganism - be that virus, bacteria, fungus, or parasite - or microbial population, or antigenic or allergenic proteins and peptides derived from the environment as a whole, containing also proteins from eukaryotic sources. However, times have changed and...

Whatever its final readership and impact, we, the Editors, feel this book is im- portant. It addresses the realisation that there is a deep and abiding synergy, albeit one only now being properly explored and exploited, between immunol- ogy and computational science. This area of intersection we christen in silico immunology. Immunology is an inspiration for computational scientists seek- ing practical and philosophical metaphors for their work; but, at the same time, it is itself a biological discipline of such discombobulating complexity that only computational help as different as...