Abstract
Candida albicans is a member of the ascomycetes class of fungi and it is an opportunistic pathogen species responsible for a wide range of fungal infections in humans. Bioinformatics and sequencing analysis of Candida proteomics has disclosed that around 69% proteome is still uncharacterized which needs to be annotated with functions. The NCBI-Genome has termed them as hypothetical proteins (HPs) in the whole proteome of Candida. Interpretation of this substantial portion of the proteome can reveal novel pharmacological targets for markers, drug development, and other therapeutics and so on. In this article, we have assigned functional annotation to these hypothetical proteins using bioinformatics methodologies. The advanced and robust computational models have been used to assign the preliminary functions to these putative HPs with high level of confidence. The findings of this study unveil some novel pharmacological targets for drug therapy and vaccines and it would help to identify novel molecular mechanisms underlying the fungal pathogenesis.
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Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the DBT-BIF bioinformatics facility at ACBR for the digital logistic support.
Funding
The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of grant received from ICMR, Government of India, Delhi-110029 [No./ICMR/52/06/2022-BIO/BMS] and IoE, DU [No./IoE/2023-24/12/FRP].
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Bulbul, Arushi Kapoor, and Pankaj collected data and wrote the manuscript. Deepika Tripathi and Ravi Kant did a bioinformatic study. Daman Saluja reviewed and proofread the manuscript Meenakshi Sharma supervised the work analyzed the results and finalized the manuscript.
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Tripathi, D., Kapoor, A., Bulbul et al. Functional annotation of Candida albicans hypothetical proteins: a bioinformatics approach. Arch Microbiol 206, 118 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-024-03840-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00203-024-03840-9