Genome-wide Analysis of Mycoplasma hominis for the Identification of Putative Therapeutic Targets

Abstract

Ever increasing propensity of antibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria raises the demand for the development of novel therapeutic agents to control this grave problem. Advances in the field of bioinformatics, genomics, and proteomics have greatly facilitated the discovery of alternative drugs by swift identification of new drug targets. In the present study, we employed comparative genomics and metabolic pathway analysis with an aim of identifying therapeutic targets in Mycoplasma hominis. Our study has revealed 40 annotated metabolic pathways, including five unique pathways of M. hominis. Our study also identified 179 essential proteins, including 59 proteins having no similarity with human proteins. Further filtering by molecular weight, subcellular localization, functional analysis, and protein network interaction, we identified 57 putative candidates for which new drugs can be developed. Druggability analysis for each of the identified targets has prioritized 16 proteins as suitable for potential drug development.