Journal of Biotechnology & Biomaterials
Open Access

Abstract

The availability of genomic data of human parasites in public databases has made it possible to find drug targets in the pathogen. One such approach is genome subtraction where we try to find genes which are essential to the pathogen but not present in the host. Such gene products can be proved as potential targets in the parasites, with absolutely no host toxicity issues. The leishmaniases are a group of diseases caused by protozoan parasites of the genus Leishmania. The parasite is transmitted by bites from sand-flies infected with the parasite. Leishmaniasis presents in three main clinical forms: cutaneous, mucocutaneous and visceral, which are associated with a broad range of signs, symptoms and degrees of severity. The present study aims at identifying Potential Candidate Drug Targets In Leishmania Donovani and Leishmania Infantum through genome subtraction approach using Pairwise comparison. Protein sequences belonging to the parasite was derieved from NCBI genome and compared with human proteins. Non- homologous proteins were compared to essential genes present in Database of essential genes. Proteins which passed the screening parameters were considered essential to the parasite. These essential proteins were compared to Protein Data Bank, to obtain significant hits belonging to Leishmania Donovani and Leishmania Infantum. These hits were studied to obtain promising Targets in the parasite. Six potential targets were identified overall, namely topoisomerase, petridine reductase(PTR1) phosphoribosyl transferase, Trypanothione Reductase, OMP decarboxylase and Glyoxalase II.

Biography

Shivanjali Saxena and suhail ahmad khan are pursuing Btech-Bioinformatics from Amity university, lucknow. the project work entitled ?Identification of therapeutic targets in Leishmania donovani & Leishmania infantum? is a bonafide work carried out by Shivanjali saxena and suhail ahmad khan, at Institute of Computational Biology, Bangalore, in partial fulfillment for the award of degree of ?Bachelor of Technology in Bioinformatics? of AMITY University, Lucknow, during May 2012-June 2012. This work was done under Ms. Tanima shree, the research associate of Institute of computational biology (IOCB).