Fatumo, S. and Plaimas, K. and Mallm, J. P. and Schramm, G. and Adebiyi, E. F. and Oswald, M. and Eils, R. and Konig, R. (2009) Estimating novel potential drug targets of Plasmodium falciparum by analysing the metabolic network of knock-out strains in silico. Infection, Genetics and Evolution, 9. pp. 351-358.
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Abstract
Malaria is one of the world’s most common and serious diseases causing death of about 3 million people each year. Its most severe occurrence is caused by the protozoan Plasmodium falciparum. Biomedical research could enable treating the disease by effectively and specifically targeting essential enzymes of this parasite. However, the parasite has developed resistance to existing drugsmaking it indispensable to discover new drugs. We have established a simple computational tool which analyses the topology of the metabolic network of P. falciparum to identify essential enzymes as possible drug targets.Weinvestigated the essentiality of a reaction in the metabolic network by deleting (knocking-out) such a reaction in silico. The algorithmselected neighbouring compounds of the investigated reaction that had to be produced by alternative biochemical pathways. Using breadth first searches, we tested qualitatively if these products could be generated by reactions that serve as potential deviations of the metabolic flux. With this we identified 70 essential reactions. Our results were compared with a comprehensive list of 38 targets of approved malaria drugs. When combining our approach with an in silico analysis performed recently [Yeh, I., Hanekamp, T., Tsoka, S., Karp, P.D., Altman, R.B., 2004. Computational analysis of Plasmodium falciparum metabolism: organizing genomic information to facilitate drug discovery. Genome Res. 14, 917–924] we could improve the precision of the prediction results. Finally we present a refined list of 22 new potential candidate targets for P. falciparum, half of which have reasonable evidence to be valid targets against micro-organisms and cancer.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science |
| Divisions: | Faculty of Engineering, Science and Mathematics > School of Electronics and Computer Science |
| Depositing User: | Mr Adewole Adewumi |
| Date Deposited: | 28 Dec 2012 18:52 |
| Last Modified: | 28 Dec 2012 18:52 |
| URI: | http://eprints.covenantuniversity.edu.ng/id/eprint/1141 |
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