Synteny Approach of Drug Target Prediction among Unique Hypothetical Proteins of <i>Streptococcus Gordonii</i> Causing Infective Endocarditis

Abstract

At the time of infection, many of the gene products of completely  sequenced organisms yet remain ‘hypothetical’ meaning they remain unsimilar to any previously characterized and may disguise some true virulent factors. Domain scanning provides a means of understanding functional information in these cases, extending facilitated identification of
their virulence factors, proceeding for antimicrobial drug and vaccine  design. In developing countries, mortality rate due to Infective  endocarditis is accelerating along with retardation in efficiency of pathogen specific drugs. We have re-annotated at domain level and predicted cellular localization of 200 unique and hypothetical proteins obtained by syntenic comparison of Streptococcus gordonii among other strains of similar species for similar infection. The study resulted into 200 unique and hypothetical proteins, of which, domains of 85 proteins are  predictable, representing 15 with no similarity with human proteome. Later, 9 proteins with 8 domains predicted to be antimicrobial targets. Further, these can be experimentally validated for drug and vaccine target ability.