| dc.description.abstract | Tuberculosis is the world’s leading cause of death by infectious disease. Antibiotic resistance and HIV co-infection is increasing at an alarming rate. Mycosins-1-5 are subtilisin-like serine proteases within the periplasmic space of the tuberculosis bacterial cell. However, to date, Mycosin-1 is thought to be the most interesting because it is only expressed after TB infection and is thought to be essential to its virulence. The role of Mycosins-2-4 is not yet known. These factors make Mycosin-1 a novel drug target. This study aims to clone and characterize Mycosin-1 for further investigation as a drug target. The mycosin-1 and mycosin-2 genes were successfully cloned for later use in expression studies. Mycosin-2 has been included in the cloning process because of the conservation of the Mycosins’ active sites. The most potent inhibitor will be able to bind all five Mycosins. Several sequence alignments have also been included to help characterize the Mycosin-1 protein. The evidence suggests that Mycosin-1 is a typical subtilisin-like protease, allowing the characterization of the protein. A homology model has been built to gain further insight into the protein and for later use in virtual inhibitor screening. | en |
