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Computational identification of potential drug targets against Mycobacterium leprae

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Abstract

Leprosy is caused by Mycobacterium leprae a major health concern in several countries of the world particularly in Asia and Africa. The preventive measurement has been adopted by the combined efforts of the leprosy burden countries and WHO. However, the situation is getting worse due to the emergence of the resistant strains of the M. leprae. The continuous efforts are underway to discover new chemical agent as a therapeutic to cure the diseases caused by the resistant pathogens of bacterial origins. The resistant pathogens are still growing on alarming rate. In order to overcome the resistant pathogens, a relatively newer approach has been applied since last decade. One of them involves the computational subtractive genomics, in which the complete proteome of the bacterial pathogen is step-wise reduced to few potential drug targets. The steps include the finding of non-host proteins, essentiality of the proteins to the pathogens and involvement of the shortlisted proteins in essential metabolic pathways of the pathogen, which are necessary for the bacterial survival. In the current study, we applied computational subtractive genomics on complete proteome of the M. leprae and ended up with 16 hypothetical proteins as potential drug targets against which new active molecules can be proposed to ameliorate the activity to cure the disease associated with them. The study is innovative and has a potential to improve the research directions in unraveling the novel cure of leprosy.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the International Foundation for Sciences (IFS) for providing the research grant.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lab 103 PCMD ext. Dr. Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research, International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, Karachi, 75270, Pakistan

    Reaz Uddin & Waqasuddin Khan

  2. Prince of Wales Clinical School, Faculty of Medicine, UNSW, Sydney, Australia

    Reaz Uddin

  3. National Centre for Bioinformatics, Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, Pakistan

    Syed Sikander Azam

  4. Department of Biochemistry, Abdul Wali Khan University Mardan, Mardan, Pakistan

    Abdul Wadood

  5. Jamil-ur-Rahman Center for Genome Research, Dr. Panjwani Center for Molecular Medicine and Drug Research, International Center for Chemical and Biological Sciences, University of Karachi, Karachi, Pakistan

    Waqasuddin Khan

  6. Department of Chemistry, COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Abbottabad, 22060, Pakistan

    Umar Farooq & Ajmal Khan

Authors
  1. Reaz Uddin
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  2. Syed Sikander Azam
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  3. Abdul Wadood
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  4. Waqasuddin Khan
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  5. Umar Farooq
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  6. Ajmal Khan
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Reaz Uddin.

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The authors report no conflict of interest, and they are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

Electronic supplementary material

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

File S1

Complete PSORT results (PDF 386 kb)

File S2

Functional annotation of non-homologous, essential and hypothetical proteins of M. leprae (PDF 47 kb)

File S3

Essential non-homologous proteins in M. leprae involved in different metabolic pathways and other cellular activities (obtained from KAAS) (PDF 77 kb)

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Uddin, R., Azam, S.S., Wadood, A. et al. Computational identification of potential drug targets against Mycobacterium leprae . Med Chem Res 25, 473–481 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00044-016-1501-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00044-016-1501-6

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