In-Silico detection of chokepoints enzymes in four plasmodium species

Abstract

Of the over 156 species of Plasmodium that infect vertebrates, only four infect man: Plasmodium falciparum, Plasmodium vivax, Plasmodium ovale and Plasmodium malariae. Other species infect other animals including birds, reptiles and rodents. The rodent malaria parasites are Plasmodium berghei, Plasmodium yoelii, Plasmodium chabaudi and Plasmodium vinckei. Since research has shown a high similarity in sequence and properties between human and rodent, we sought to study the likely similar enzymatic pathways between the parasites that infect these two organisms that may be used as drug targets. The paper therefore, employed a computational biochemical approach to identify some choke points in the four selected species of Plasmodium: two (2) that infect humans and two (2) that infect rodents. These include- P. falciparum, P. vivax, P. berghei and P. chanbaudi respectively. In general, we identified an average of 178 chokepoint enzymes in these Plasmodium species which were common to all of them. Since there were several chokepoints enzymes common to all the species; we hypothesize that the chokepoints which are only common to a particular species could be possible drug targets to the individual parasites.