In silico Drug Targeting of Vibrio vulnificus CMCP6

Abstract

Vibrio vulnificus is a halophilic and highly human-pathogenic bacterium, showing very high mortality rate when infected. In order to facilitate the drug development process for this, we undertook in silico analysis to identify specific drug targets in the genome-scale metabolism of V. vulnificus. With a newly sequenced and annotated genome of V. vulnificus, we first reconstructed its genome-scale metabolic network using the KEGG database. Subsequently, we employed constraints-based flux analysis using MetaFluxNet and GAMS to identify essentiality of the genes comprising the metabolic network. Enzymatic reactions whose deletions result in the failure of biomass formation were primarily considered as drug targets. This set of candidates was then compared with the human genome sequence using BLAST to exclude candidates that might cause side-effects in the human body.