Title: Identification of putative therapeutic candidates of plasmodium falciparum by in-silico comparative genomics analysis

Authors: Arun Kumar Kashyap; Sujit Shah; Ajay Kumar; Buddhi Prakash Jain; Nikita Kashyap

Addresses: Department of Biotechnology, Govt. E. Raghavendra Rao Postgraduate Science College, Bilaspur – 495006 (C.G.), India ' Daffodil Agro Biological Research Center, Lalitpur – 44600, Nepal ' Department of Plant Science, School of Biological Sciences, Central University of Kerala, Kasargod – 671316, Kerala, India ' Department of Zoology, Mahatma Gandhi Central University, Motihari – 845401, Bihar, India ' Institute of Technology, Guru Ghasidas University, Koni – 495009, Bilaspur (C.G.), India

Abstract: Malaria is an endemic disease causing millions of death worldwide. People from many countries are at risk of being infected by malaria. The treatments available today are limited and there is a need for better therapeutics. The methods for vaccine candidate identification and drug candidates are time-consuming and laborious. However, the recent advancement and development in genomics provide an efficient alternative technique for the identification of drug and vaccine candidates in combination with computational biology. In the present study comparative genomic approach was used for identification of the novel therapeutic candidate including vaccine candidates and drug candidates for Plasmodium falciparum based on the essentiality of protein for the organism. By homology from known essential genes of a different eukaryotic organism, 579 essential genes are identified in Plasmodium falciparum. By metabolic pathway analysis, the identified proteins were classified into different metabolic pathway proteins. Further, the different parameters of the essentiality were checked to confirm the identified protein by subcellular localisation analysis, codon adaptation index, KOG class etc. Druggability analysis of identified candidates was done and 46 protein could be identified for FDA-approved drugs, by antigenic determinant analysis and MHC I analysis 14 vaccine candidates were identified.

Keywords: plasmodium; comparative genomics; therapeutic candidate; vaccine candidate; in silico.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBRA.2022.126741

International Journal of Bioinformatics Research and Applications, 2022 Vol.18 No.4, pp.358 - 383

Received: 11 May 2022
Accepted: 16 Jun 2022
Published online: 03 Nov 2022 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article