Title: In-silico analysis of riboswitch of Nocardia farcinica for design of its inhibitors and pharmacophores

Authors: Amritpreet Kaur; Somdutt Mujwar; Neeru Adlakha

Addresses: Department of Bioinformatics, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal 462003, India ' Department of Bioinformatics, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal 462003, India ' Department of Bioinformatics, Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology, Bhopal 462003, India

Abstract: Nocardia farcinica causes human infections either by pulmonary inhalation or inoculation via wounds and causes nocardiosis, brain abscesses and secondary infection in immune-compromised patients. N. farcinica infection is mostly reported in Asia, Europe and North America with a mortality rate of 10-31%. Antibiotic treatment available for N. farcinica infection have the problem of side-effects and drug resistance development by bacteria against antibiotics such as ampicillin, third- generation cephalosporins, etc. Therefore, this paper explored riboswitch as an alternative drug-target to address these issues and its optimal inhibitors are designed. Riboswitches are regulatory elements found in the 5′UTRs of many mRNAs. The designed lead molecule will prove helpful in the development of newer drug molecules for the infection treatment caused by N. farcinica. The proposed inhibitors are supposed to be free from the problem of side-effects and drug-resistance associated with antibiotics, as there are remote chances of mutations in riboswitches.

Keywords: Nocardia farcinica; riboswitch; drug resistance; inhibitors; pharmacophores; in-silico analysis; inhibitor design; N. farcinica infection drug side effects; drug targets; drug molecules; infection treatment; mRNA; untranslated regions.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCBDD.2016.078278

International Journal of Computational Biology and Drug Design, 2016 Vol.9 No.3, pp.261 - 276

Received: 03 Mar 2015
Accepted: 24 Aug 2015

Published online: 14 Aug 2016 *

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