In silico synteny based comparative genomics approach for identification and characterization of novel therapeutic targets in Chlamydophila pneumoniae

Chlamydophila pneumoniae is one of the most important and well studied gram negative bacterial strain with respect to community acquired pneumonia and other respiratory diseases like Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Chronic asthma, Alzheimer's disease, Atherosclerosis and Multisclerosis which have a great potential to infect humans and many other mammals. According to WHO prediction, COPD is to become the third leading cause of death by 2030. Unfortunately, the molecular mechanisms leading to chronic infections are poorly understood and the difficulty in culturing C pneumoniae in experimental conditions and lack of entirely satisfactory serological methods for diagnosis is also a hurdle for drug discovery and development. We have performed an insilico synteny based comparative genomics analysis of C pneumoniae and other eight Chlamydial organisms to know the potential of C pneumoniae which cause COPD but other Chlamydial organisms lack in potential to cause COPD though some are involved in human pathogenesis. We have identified total 354 protein sequences as non-orthologous to other Chlamydial organisms, except hypothetical proteins 70 were found functional out of which 60 are non homologous to Homo sapiens proteome and among them 18 protein sequences are found to be essential for survival of the C pneumoniae based on BLASTP search against DEG database of essential genes. CELLO analysis results showed that about 80% proteins are found to be cytoplasmic, Among which 5 were found as bacterial exotoxins and 2 as bacterial endotoxins, remaining 11 proteins were found to be involved in DNA binding, RNA binding, catalytic activity, ATP binding, oxidoreductase activity, hydrolase activity and proteolysis activity. It is expected that our data will facilitate selection of C pneumoniae proteins for successful entry into drug design pipelines.