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Title

Identification of potential apicoplast associated therapeutic targets in human and animal pathogen Toxoplasma gondii ME49

 

Authors

Sadegh Saremy1, Mahdi Eskandarian Boroujeni2, Biplab Bhattacharjee3*, Viditi Mittal4 & Jhinuk Chatterjee3

 

Affiliation

1Brindavan College, Bangalore, INDIA; 2Garden City College, Bangalore, INDIA; 3Department of Biotechnology, PES Institute of Technology, Bangalore, INDIA; 4Amity Institute of Biotechnology, Noida, INDIA

 

Email

biplabbhattacharjee2010@gmail.com; *Corresponding authors

 

Article Type

Hypothesis

 

Date

Received November 18, 2011; Accepted December 08, 2011; Published December 21, 2011

Abstract

Toxoplasma gondii ME49 is an obligatory intracellular apicomplexa parasite that causes toxoplasmosis in humans, domesticated and wild animals. Waterborne outbreaks of acute toxoplasmosis worldwide reinforce the transmission of Toxoplasma gondii ME49 to humans through contaminated water and may have a greater epidemiological impact than previously believed. In the quest for drug and vaccine target identification subtractive genomics involving subtraction between the host and pathogen genome has been implemented for enlisting essential pathogen specific proteins. Using this approach, our analysis on both human and Toxoplasma gondii ME49 reveals that out of 7987 protein coding sequences of the pathogen, 950 represent essential non human-homologous proteins. Subcellular localization prediction & comparative-biochemical pathway analysis of these essential proteins gives a list of apicoplast-associated proteins having unique pathogen-specific metabolic pathway. These apicoplast-associated enzymes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis pathway of Toxoplasma gondii ME49, may be used as potential drug targets, as the pathway is vital for the protozoan’s survival. Structure prediction of drug target proteins was done using fold based recognition method. Screening of the functional inhibitors against these novel targets may result in discovery of novel therapeutic compounds that can be effective against Toxoplasma gondii ME49.

 

Keywords

Toxoplasma gondii ME49; Essential gene; Drug targets; Subtractive genomics; Pathway analysis.

 

Citation

Saremy et al. Bioinformation 7(8): 379-383 (2011)
 

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.