Evolutionary patterning: a novel approach to the identification of potential drug target sites in Plasmodium falciparum.

ABSTRACT: Malaria continues to be the most lethal protozoan disease of humans. Drug development programs exhibit a high attrition rate and parasite resistance to chemotherapeutic drugs exacerbates the problem. Strategies that limit the development of resistance and minimize host side-effects are therefore of major importance. In this study, a novel approach, termed evolutionary patterning (EP), was used to identify suitable drug target sites that would minimize the emergence of parasite resistance. EP uses the ratio of non-synonymous to synonymous substitutions (omega) to assess the patterns of evolutionary change at individual codons in a gene and to identify codons under the most intense purifying selection (omega < or = 0.1). The extreme evolutionary pressure to maintain these residues implies th

SUBMITTER: Durand PM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2577034 | biostudies-literature | 2008

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature