Computational identification of essential enzymes as potential drug targets in Shigella flexneri pathogenesis using metabolic pathway analysis and epitope mapping.

Computational identification of essential enzymes as potential drug targets in Shigella flexneri pathogenesis using metabolic pathway analysis and epitope mapping. J Microbiol Biotechnol. 2020 Dec 14;: Authors: Narad P, Himanshu, Bansal H Abstract Shigella flexneri is a facultative intracellular pathogen that causes bacillary dysentery in humans. The organism can cause more than a million deaths yearly because of infections with Shigella flexneri and the victims are the children living in the developing countries. Therefore, identification of novel and unique drug targets of this pathogen is instrumental to overcome the problem of drug resistance to current therapy of antibiotic drugs given to the patients. In the current study, comparative metabolic pathway analysis was implemented to identify essential enzymes for the survival of the bacteria and propose potential drug targets for the pathogen. To accomplish this comparative analysis of the metabolic pathways of the host Homo sapiens and the pathogen Shigella flexneri was performed. First, we extracted the metabolic pathways of host and pathogen from KEGG database. Next, manual comparison of the pathways was done to categorize the pathways that were exclusive to the pathogen. Further, all enzymes for the 26 unique pathways were extracted and submitted to Geptop tool for identification of essential enzymes and further screening in determining the feasibility of therapeutic targets h...
Source: Journal of Microbiology and Biotechnology - Category: Biotechnology Authors: Tags: J Microbiol Biotechnol Source Type: research