Dissemin is shutting down on January 1st, 2025

Published in

Bentham Science Publishers, Current Topics in Medicinal Chemistry, 9(16), p. 1040-1069, 2015

DOI: 10.2174/1568026615666150825143307

Links

Tools

Export citation

Search in Google Scholar

Current Advances in the Identification and Characterization of Putative Drug and Vaccine Targets in the Bacterial Genomes

This paper is available in a repository.
This paper is available in a repository.

Full text: Download

Green circle
Preprint: archiving allowed
Orange circle
Postprint: archiving restricted
Red circle
Published version: archiving forbidden
Data provided by SHERPA/RoMEO

Abstract

The development in sequencing technologies over the past few decades has increased the pace of decoding the genetic and functional information present in the genomes of pathogenic microorganisms. The knowledge obtained through sequencing projects facilitated the identification of genes that codes for virulence factors. A major portion of genomes of pathogenic of bacteria contains genes which are classified as “hypothetical or uncharacterized”. Due to unavailability of precise information about the functionality of these genes, the pathogenic mechanisms utilized by varieties of microorganisms are not fully understood. This respective class of proteins draws a significant interest of pharmaceutical research as they have potential to provide new clues regarding the development of novel therapeutics particularly against the multidrug resistant strains of bacteria. The in silico identification of putative drug and vaccine targets in the set of uncharacterized proteins through comparative and subtractive genome analyses facilitates the increase usability and efficiency of the present drugs. The functional annotation of these characterized target proteins can uncover a variety of biochemical pathways important for the survival and pathogenesis of the bacteria. This review focuses on the current protocols available for identification and functional annotations of these uncharacterized potential therapeutic targets.