In-Silico Studies of Essential Metabolic Reactions of Trypanosoma brucei: Identifying Potential Drug Targets
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The aim of this work is to analyze the metabolic
pathways of Trypanosoma brucei and identify
essential reactions that may be considered as drug
targets. Data from the metabolic reaction database of
TrypanoCyc version10.0.0 was used to establish a
connected graph. The analysis of the biochemical
network is based on its topology. The metabolic
network was implemented with Perl. Two reactions
were defined as neighbours if a metabolite that is the
product of one reaction and substrate of the other
exists. This yielded a bipartite graph of alternating
reaction and metabolic compound nodes. A graph
based algorithms were used to analyze the structure
of the biochemical networks to infer differences when
exposed to changing nutrient and environmental
conditions. Choke-points and load-points were used
to estimate if reactions are essential for the
organism. This produced a network of 809
metabolites and 798 reactions. With this strategy, we
have identified 99 essential enzymatic reactions.
These reactions can serve as drug targets to inhibit a
normal metabolic flow in the parasite without
harming the host. Further work is required to design
drugs that can inhibit the targets
Keywords
QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science, QH301 Biology