Structural

Structural Parasitology

What is structural parasitology?

It is basically the study of protein structures in a parasite. The specification of the parasite would then help in the assessment of the disease and will help us to better understand how these proteins function differently from homologous proteins found in humans.

It would also help in the discovery of new drugs that would help prevent the disease. Many parasitic proteins are resistant to crystalisation as they contain inserts that are not commonly found in humans or prokaryotic proteins.

There are two organisations that have contributed many parasite structures: the MSGPP (Medical Structural Genomics of Pathogenic Protozoa) and SGC (Structural Genomics Consortium).

These groups work on different proteins, mainly human proteins.

Structural parasitology would help in drug discovery.

 

 

MSGPP (Medical Structural Genomics of Pathogenic Protozoa)

url: https://www.msgpp.org/index.shtml

 

Special Characteristics:

  • Use protein structure prediction methods and medical relevance in target selection.
  • Rapid evaluation of expression levels and solubility of thousands of variants of proteins obtained by scrambled sequences from different Leishmania strains.
  • Using two hybrid methods to discover and solve structures of soluble heteromultimers.
  • Using ligand docking procedures, deep sequence family alignments and very weak structural homologies to derive function from structure.

 

Project Description:

Structural and Functional Genomics is characterized as a parallel attack on many proteins simultaneously, HT protein expression, HT protein crystallization, HT structure determination, and cherry picking in the first pass.

Their main purpose is to analyze the three dimensional structures of various parasites from major global pathogenic protozoa.

 

Structural Genomics Consortium

url: https://www.thesgc.com/

About:

The Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) is a not-for-profit organization that aims to determine the three dimensional structures of proteins of medical relevance, and place them in the public domain without res

 

We do not take credit for any of the information found in this website. All the information is obtained from various forms of literature.

Parasite is defined as an organism that derives its nutrients from another living organism, the host. Parasitic diseases are usually referred to those caused by protozoa, helminths and arthropods which love at the expense of their host. Successful parasites are the ones who are able to maintain their own life processes without killing their host.

Several ways to distinguish parasites infection and bacteria/viruses infection:

  1. Parasites have a complex life cycle that involves the formation of resistant cyst in the organism. (it can usually survive for long periods outside the host.)
  2. Life cycle might involve an insect vector (carrier) that is important for the transmission of disease. In most cases, it is impossible to eliminate the vector effectively.
  3. Some parasites are capable of infecting both humans and animals, thus both can act as reservoirs for the infection. This is true for most protozal infections carried by insects.
  4. Many parasites has life cycle that requires enough time to allow for the various stages to mature, either in soil or in an insect or host.