Virulence proteins in pathogens are essential for causing disease in a host. They enable the pathogen to invade, survive and multiply within the host, thus enhancing its potential to cause disease while also causing evasion of host defense mechanisms. Identifying these factors, especially potential vaccine candidates or drug targets, is critical for vaccine or drug development research. In this context, we present an improved version of VirulentPred 1.0 for rapidly identifying virulent proteins. The VirulentPred 2.0 is based on training machine learning models with experimentally validated virulent protein sequences. VirulentPred 2.0 achieved 84.71% accuracy with the validation dataset and 85.18% on an independent test dataset. The models are trained and evaluated with the latest sequence datasets of virulent proteins, which are three times greater in number than the proteins used in the earlier version of VirulentPred. Moreover, a significant improvement of 11% in the prediction accuracy over the earlier version is achieved with the best position-specific scoring matrix (PSSM)-based model for the latest test dataset. VirulentPred 2.0 is available as a user-friendly web interface at https://bioinfo.icgeb.res.in/virulent2/ and a standalone application suitable for bulk predictions. With higher efficiency and availability as a standalone tool, VirulentPred 2.0 holds immense potential for high throughput yet efficient identification of virulent proteins in bacterial pathogens.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/pro.4808 | DOI Listing |
Trends Biotechnol
January 2025
Department of Food Safety/Hygiene and Risk Management, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan; Institute of Basic Medical Sciences, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan. Electronic address:
Bacterial proteome microarrays are high-throughput, adaptable tools that allow the simultaneous investigation of thousands of proteins from various bacterial species. These arrays are used to explore bacterial pathogenicity, pathogen-host interactions, and clinical diseases. Recent advancements have expanded their application to profiling human antibodies, identifying biomarkers for infectious and autoimmune diseases, and studying antimicrobial peptides (AMPs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Biol Macromol
January 2025
College of Veterinary Medicine, South China Agricultural University, Guangzhou 510642, China; Zhaoqing Branch Centre of Guangdong Laboratory for Lingnan Modern Agricultural Science and Technology, Zhaoqing 526238, China; Zhaoqing Institute of Biotechnology Co., Ltd., Zhaoqing 526238, China; Guangdong Wens Dahuanong Bio-Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Xinxing 527400, China. Electronic address:
Virus-host protein interaction is critical for successful completion of viral replication cycles. As the largest nonstructural protein (NSP) of porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV), NSP2 plays multiple and critical roles in viral replication, antiviral immunity, cellular tropism and virulence. An interactome of this protein with host proteins would be instrumental in full understanding of these multifunctional roles.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrob Pathog
January 2025
Department of Plant Protection, Faculty of Agriculture, Azarbaijan Shahid Madani University, Tabriz, Iran.
This study aimed to achieve two main objectives: first, to determine whether the virulence factors of symbiotic bacteria of entomopathogenic nematodes (EPNs) against insect hosts are cell-associated or secreted, and to shed light on the underlying mechanisms of pathogenicity; and second, to identify and evaluate the standalone pathogenicity of symbiotic bacteria associated with entomopathogenic nematodes against Tenebrio molitor. Three bacterial species, Xenorhabdus nematophila (A41, SC, A18 and SF), Photorhabdus kayaii, and P. thracensis, were isolated and characterized via phylogenetic analysis of 16S-rRNA and gyrB genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Top Med Chem
January 2025
Laboratório de Estudos Avançados de Microrganismos Emergentes e Resistentes (LEAMER), Departamento de Microbiologia Geral, Instituto de Microbiologia Paulo de Góes (IMPG), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Background: Scedosporium apiospermum is a multidrug-resistant filamentous fungus that causes localized and disseminated diseases. Our group has previously described that metalbased complexes containing copper(II) or silver(I) ions complexed with 1,10-phenanthroline-5,6- dione (phendione) inhibited the viability of S. apiospermum conidial cells.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Biol Rep
January 2025
Department of Neuromuscular Disorders, UCL Queen Square Institute of Neurology, Queen Square House, London, WC1N 3BG, UK.
Background: Male EBP disorder with neurologic defects (MEND syndrome) is an extremely rare disorder with a prevalence of less than 1/1,000,000 individuals worldwide. It is inherited as an X-linked recessive disorder caused by impaired sterol biosynthesis due to nonmosaic hypomorphic EBP variants. MEND syndrome is characterized by variable clinical manifestations including intellectual disability, short stature, scoliosis, digital abnormalities, cataracts, and dermatologic abnormalities.
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