An in Silico Approach for Prioritizing Drug Targets in Metabolic Pathway of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis

There is an urgent need to develop novel Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) drugs that are active against drug resistant bacteria but, more importantly, kill persistent bacteria. Our study structured based on integrated analysis of metabolic pathways, small molecule screening and similarity Search in PubChem Database. Metabolic analysis approaches based on Unified weighted used for potent target selection. Our results suggest that pantothenate synthetase (panC) and and 3-methyl-2-oxobutanoate hydroxymethyl transferase (panB) as a appropriate drug targets. In our study, we used pantothenate synthetase because of existence inhibitors. We have reported the discovery of new antitubercular compounds through ligand based approaches using computational tools

The dense granule protein GRA2, a new marker for the serodiagnosis of acute Toxoplasma infection: comparison of sera collected in both France and Iran from pregnant women.

GRA2 is a highly immunogenic protein secreted from the dense granules of Toxoplasma gondii. Recent success in purifying full-length, soluble GRA2 from bacteria as a thioredoxin (TRX)-(Hisx6) fusion protein led to investigate the antigenicity of the recombinant protein against human sera. On immunoblots, TRX-(Hisx6)-GRA2 was recognized by sera collected in Iran from T. gondii-infected pregnant women. An IgG enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was developed to evaluate the reactivity of sera, collected from pregnant women both in France and Iran, to the TRX-(Hisx6)-GRA2 fusion protein. Specificity of the test was 96.4%. Sensitivity of the GRA2 enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay ranged from 95.8% (sera collected in France) to 100% (sera collected in Iran) for sera of acute infection and from 65.7% (sera collected in France) to 71.4% (sera collected in Iran) for sera of chronic infection. The recombinant GRA2 could thus advantageously complement previously described T. gondii antigens for the serodiagnosis of acute Toxoplasma infection

Serodiagnosis of recently acquired Toxoplasma gondii infection in pregnant women using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays with a recombinant dense granule GRA6 protein.

Indirect immunoglobulin G (IgG) and IgM enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISAs) with a recombinant GRA6 protein of Toxoplasma gondii were developed and evaluated for accurate diagnosis of recently acquired infection in pregnant women. According to the results from Toxoplasma serodiagnostic tests, women were classified into 3 groups representing acute (group I), chronic (group II), or no Toxoplasma infection (group III). To discriminate group I from group II sera, the GRA6-IgG-ELISA reached sensitivity and specificity of 87.5% and 94.1%, respectively. Although 22 (91.7%) of 24 group I sera were positive by the GRA6-IgM-ELISA, only 1 (2.9%) of 34 group II sera scored positive. The GRA6-IgM-ELISA displayed a meaningful correlation with Vidas Toxo IgM and exhibited higher specificity (97.1%) than Euroimmun IgM ELISA (88.2%) (Euroimmun, L?k, Germany) for detection of recent infection. These results demonstrate that IgG and IgM ELISA with rGRA6 are useful to identify and discriminate recent from past Toxoplasma infection in pregnant women