Drug targets prediction for MDR Mycobacterium tuberculosis using insilico genome analysis

Abstract

Mycobacterium tuberculosis is the causative agent of the disease, tuberculosis. The most researched clinical strain of Mycobacterium tuberculosis is H37Rv. To identify possible therapeutic targets, in-silico analyses of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis H37Rv genome were carried out. The genome sequence was downloaded from the website of NCBI (National Center for Biotechnology Information). The DEG (Database of Essential Genes) was consulted to identify essential genes. Additionally, homology searches with the human genome were conducted using BLASTX. Out of a total of 3924 genes, 594 were determined to be essential for Mycobacterium tuberculosis, of which 366 had no sequence similarity to the human genome. Out of 366 genes, 242 potential drug targets have been found after being screened for fictitious and unidentified genes. After functional analysis of these 242 possible targets using Uniprot, 181 of them were identified as potential drug targets. Among the 181 target genes, 42 were related to amino acid biosynthesis, 22 were related to cell wall biosynthesis, 19 to translation, 12 to transcription, 7 to lipid metabolism, 7 to carbohydrate metabolism, etc.