Wiwanitkit V
Department of Laboratory Medicine, Wiwanitkit House, Bangkhae, Bangkok, Thailand.
Indian J Med Microbiol. 2008 Apr-Jun;26(2):158-9. doi: 10.4103/0255-0857.40532.
Trichomonas vaginalis, the causative agent for human trichomoniasis, is a problematic sexually transmitted disease mainly in women. At present, metronidazole-resistant trichomoniasis is an infrequent but challenging problem with no universally successful treatment. Genetic mutation is believed to be an important factor leading to increasing drug resistance. Understanding the mutation status will help to design accurate strategies of therapy against mutant strains of T. vaginalis. The author performed a bioinformatic analysis to determine positions that tend to comply peptide motifs in the amino acid sequence of ferredoxin of T. vaginalis. Based on this study, the weak linkages in the studied protein can be identified and can be useful information for prediction of possible new mutations that can lead to drug resistance. In addition, the results from this study can be good information for further research on the diagnosis for mutants and new effective drug development.
阴道毛滴虫是人类滴虫病的病原体，是一种主要困扰女性的性传播疾病。目前，甲硝唑耐药性滴虫病虽不常见但颇具挑战性，尚无普遍成功的治疗方法。基因突变被认为是导致耐药性增加的重要因素。了解突变状态将有助于设计针对阴道毛滴虫突变菌株的精确治疗策略。作者进行了生物信息学分析，以确定阴道毛滴虫铁氧化还原蛋白氨基酸序列中倾向于符合肽基序的位置。基于这项研究，可以识别所研究蛋白质中的薄弱环节，这对于预测可能导致耐药性的新突变可能是有用的信息。此外，这项研究的结果可为进一步研究突变体诊断和开发新的有效药物提供良好的信息。
