European Journal of Biomedical and Pharmaceutical Sciences

COMPUTATIONAL ANALYSIS OF MOLECULAR SEQUENCES OF MYCOBACTERIUM TUBERCULOSIS AND LEPRAE ON THE BASIS OF PATHWAY ANALYSIS FOR DRUG TARGET IDENTIFICATION

Lakshmi Pillai* and Usha Chouhan

ABSTRACT

The genus Mycobacterium is best known for its two major pathogenic species, M. tuberculosis and M. leprae, the causative agents of two of the world's oldest diseases, tuberculosis and leprosy, respectively. M. tuberculosis kills approximately two million people each year and is thought to latently infect one-third of the world's population. Proteins of these two strains vary a lot and do share some similar characteristics too. Wet lab experiments usually used to classify the proteins of these strains are highly expensive, labor intensive and time consuming. Thus there arises a need for computational approach for classification of H37Rv and Leprae. These computational approaches are fast and economical as compared to wet lab techniques. Realizing their importance, in this paper an attempt has been made to correlate strains on the basis of literature review and pathway analysis and predict them with fair accuracy. A pathway analysis is done and pathway is drawn using bioinformatics tool on the basis of literature survey showing relation between M Leprae and M.TB.

Keywords: Mycobacterium Tuberculosis (M.TB), M. Lepare, Pathway analysis, Fibrosis, Granuloma, Axenically.