Putative Drug Target Identification in Tinea Causing Pathogen Trichophyton rubrum Using Subtractive Proteomics Approach

Abstract

Trichophyton, important among the three keratinophylic fungi grouped as dermatophytes, is known to cause superficial infections in skin, nail and hair of all the living organisms. The side effects produced by the drugs currently administered to counter these infections have necessitated the search for novel targets. The present study focused on finding putative drug targets in Trichophyton rubrum using the subtractive proteomics approach where its whole proteome was analyzed to find proteins non-homologous to humans inclusive of their gut flora and human protein domain but essential to T. rubrum, to identify sub-cellular localization, functional classification of uncharacterized proteins and to analyze the protein network, druggability and pathway of the targets. The study's strength relies on its addition of important steps namely, non-homology of the pathogen domain to human domain, non-homology to gut microbiota and substantiation of the importance of the targets in networking by node deletion to the existing methods in drug discovery for dermatophytoses. The study has resulted in the identification of two novel drug targets from the whole proteome of T. rubrum that are not present in human and human gut microbiota.