Title

Identification of potential drug targets and vaccine candidates in Clostridium botulinum using subtractive genomics approach

Authors

Rati Sudha¹, Amit Katiyar², Poonam Katiyar³, Harpreet Singh² & Purushottam Prasad^1*

Affiliation

¹P.G. Department of Zoology, ANS College, Magadh University, Patna (Barh)-803213, India; ²ICMR-AIIMS Computational Genomics Centre, Division of I.S.R.M., Indian Council of Medical Research, Ansari Nagar, New Delhi-110029, India; ³NCC-Pharmacovigilance Program of India (PvPI), Indian Pharmacopoeia Commission (IPC), Raj Nagar, Ghaziabad-201002, India

Email

Purushottam Prasad - Email: 202pprasad@gmail.com; *Corresponding author

Article Type

Research Article

Date

Received December 26, 2018; Accepted January 9, 2019; Published January 31, 2019

A subtractive genomic approach has been utilized for the identification of potential drug targets and vaccine candidates in Clostridium botulinum, the causative agent of flaccid paralysis in humans. The emergence of drug-resistant pathogenic strains has become a significant global public health threat. Treatment with antitoxin can target the neurotoxin at the extracellular level, however, can’t converse the paralysis caused by botulism. Therefore, identification of drug targets and vaccine candidates in C. botulinum would be crucial to overcome drug resistance to existing antibiotic therapy. A total of 1729 crucial proteins, including chokepoint, virulence, plasmid and resistance proteins were mined and used for subtractive channel of analysis. This analysis disclosed 15 potential targets, which were non-similar to human, gut micro flora, and anti-targets in the host. The cellular localization of 6 targets was observed in the cytoplasm and might be used as a drug target, whereas 9 targets were localized in extra cellular and membrane bound proteins and can be used as vaccine candidates. Furthermore, 4 targets were observed to be homologous to more than 75 pathogens and hence are considered as broad-spectrum antibiotic targets. The identified drug and vaccine targets in this study would be useful in the design and discovery of novel therapeutic compounds against botulism.

Keywords

Botulism, drug target, vaccine target, subtractive genomics

Citation

Sudha et al. Bioinformation 15(1): 18-25 (2019)

Edited by

P Kangueane

ISSN

0973-2063

Publisher

Biomedical Informatics

License

This is an Open Access article which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited. This is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.