Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences, 2016
Hammerhead ribozymes (HHRs) are small self-cleaving RNAs, first discovered in viroids and satelli... more Hammerhead ribozymes (HHRs) are small self-cleaving RNAs, first discovered in viroids and satellite RNAs of plant viruses. They are composed of a catalytic core of conserved nucleotides flanked by three helices. More recently, hammerhead-encoding sequences have been identified in the genomes of many eukaryotes, prokaryotes and other non-viral species regulating various functions. In this study we have explored the Archaeal domain to identify HHRs using three different bioinformatics approach. Our study reveals four putative hits of HHRs type I and type II in the group Thaumarchaeota and Euryarchaeota in the Archaeal domain, one of which is the instance of HHR 1 in C. symbiosum A, already identified in a previous study. These HHRs are very similar to those previously described in terms of the conservation of their catalytic core. Based on 3-D structure analysis and free energy, these instances were concluded as putative HHRs. Our findings reveal that the catalytic core contains the conserved motifs that are essential for cleavage activity, but there are some instances in which compensatory core variations are present. However, no instances of HHRs have been found in Crenarchaeota. This study reveals a very scarce presence of HHRs in Archaea which suggests the involvement of other ncRNA elements in gene regulatory system like RNase P which are abundantly found in the Archaeal domain.
Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences, 2015
The variable surface proteins expressed by P. falciparum and P. vivax are transported to the surf... more The variable surface proteins expressed by P. falciparum and P. vivax are transported to the surface of infected erythrocyte and are exposed to the host immune system. The possibility of using variable surface proteins as a common drug target has been analyzed in both the Plasmodium species. Sequence analysis of variable surface proteins showed a low-level conservation within as well as between the species. Amino acid composition analysis revealed higher frequency of hydrophilic amino acids as compared with that of hydrophobic residues. In order to gain more insight into their diverse functional role, the three-dimensional structure was predicted using comparative modeling approach. These models were evaluated and validated by checking stereochemistry of underlying amino acids. Structural alignment of variable surface proteins by superimposing them shows less conservation. Due to differences at sequence as well as structural level, the variable surface proteins are expected to show difference in their degree of invasiveness. These differences were also cross-examined by evolutionary study, and the results obtained were in accordance with the aforesaid study. The existence of structural differences noticed in the present study showed that the variable surface proteins could not be used as a common drug target in both the malarial species. Therefore, species-specific strategy may be followed for drug targeting against variable surface proteins of P. falciparum and P. vivax.
Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine, 2015
Variation in the interval between the R-R peaks of the electrocardiogram represents the modulatio... more Variation in the interval between the R-R peaks of the electrocardiogram represents the modulation of the cardiac oscillations by the autonomic nervous system. This variation is contaminated by anomalous signals called ectopic beats, artefacts or noise which mask the true behaviour of heart rate variability. In this paper, we have proposed a combination filter of recursive impulse rejection filter and recursive 20% filter, with recursive application and preference of replacement over removal of abnormal beats to improve the pre-processing of the inter-beat intervals. We have tested this novel recursive combinational method with median method replacement to estimate the standard deviation of normal to normal (SDNN) beat intervals of congestive heart failure (CHF) and normal sinus rhythm subjects. This work discusses the improvement in pre-processing over single use of impulse rejection filter and removal of abnormal beats for heart rate variability for the estimation of SDNN and Poncaré plot descriptors (SD1, SD2, and SD1/SD2) in detail. We have found the 22 ms value of SDNN and 36 ms value of SD2 descriptor of Poincaré plot as clinical indicators in discriminating the normal cases from CHF cases. The pre-processing is also useful in calculation of Lyapunov exponent which is a nonlinear index as Lyapunov exponents calculated after proposed pre-processing modified in a way that it start following the notion of less complex behaviour of diseased states.
It is well known that an amino acid can be encoded by more than one codon, called synonymous codo... more It is well known that an amino acid can be encoded by more than one codon, called synonymous codons. The preferential use of one particular codon for coding an amino acid is referred to as codon usage bias (CUB). A quantitative analytical method, CUB and a related tool, Codon Adaptative Index have been applied to comparatively study whole genomes of a few pathogenic Trypanosomatid species. This quantitative attempt is of direct help in the comparison of qualitative features like mutational and translational selection. Pathogens of the Leishmania and Trypanosoma genus cause debilitating disease and suffering in human beings and animals. Of these, whole genome sequences are available for only five species. The complete coding sequences (CDS), highly expressed, essential and low expressed genes have all been studied for their CUB signature. The codon usage bias of essential genes and highly expressed genes show distribution similar to codon usage bias of all CDSs in Trypanosomatids. Tr...
Journal of bioinformatics and computational biology, 2013
The genome sequence of Plasmodium falciparum reveals that many metabolic pathways are unique as c... more The genome sequence of Plasmodium falciparum reveals that many metabolic pathways are unique as compared to its human host. Metabolic Network Analysis was carried out to find the essential enzymes critical for the survival of the pathogen. In the present study, choke point and load point analysis was used to locate putative targets. The identified targets were further checked to confirm that no alternate pathway or human homolog exists. Among the top 15 enzymes obtained from this analysis, we have selected P. falciparum orotidine-5'-monophosphate decarboxylase (PfODCase) enzyme as it is sequentially and structurally different from that of humans, for searching novel inhibitors. A five-point 3D pharmacophore was generated for the crystal structure of PfODCase complexes with uridine-5'-monophosphate (U5P). The binding site environment shows three H-bond acceptors, one H-bond donor and one negative ionizable feature. This pharmacophore model was used as a 3D query to perform vi...
Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, 2013
The structure-activity relationship of the anticoagulant drug warfarin were studied by studying t... more The structure-activity relationship of the anticoagulant drug warfarin were studied by studying two enantiomeric forms (S-form and R-form) of warfarin and its protonated as well as deprotonated structures in aqueous media using density functional theory (DFT). Theoretically computed Raman and IR spectra of all the computed structures were compared and their specific vibrational spectroscopic signatures were discussed. The percentage contributions of individual normal modes of warfarin, which provides direct evidence of the different molecular activity due to change in relative atomic position of atoms in molecule, were investigated through potential energy distribution (PED). The optimized energy and molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) maps show that the S-form of the drug molecules warfarin is energetically more stable than R-form and provides higher docking opportunity for the molecular binding with the receptors in the bio-systems.
Abstract Metabolites regulate their own production by directly interacting with highly conserved ... more Abstract Metabolites regulate their own production by directly interacting with highly conserved regions of mRNA that are capable of forming discrete tertiary structures. Such regions of mRNA are called riboswitches. The thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP) riboswitch is the most common riboswitch in different organisms. The TPP is an essential coenzyme that is synthesized by the coupling of pyrimidine (hydroxymethyl pyrimidine) and thiazole (hydroxyethyl thiazole). The TPP riboswitch was searched across all possible phyla of plant kingdom by using Arabidopsis thaliana, a model organism in which TPP riboswitch is already found. The aptameric domain of the TPP riboswitch is conserved at the sequence as well as structure levels in all chosen plant species. The sequence of the noncoding RNA that acts as a riboswitch and is folded into an appropriate stem-loop hairpin secondary structure with minimum free energy is predicted by several computational tools. Most of the secondary structures are similar but not the same, because of variation in sequence size. The TPP ligand can bind to the 3' untranslated region of the aptameric sequence, between the loops P2, P4, and P5 and the region between J2/3 and J4/5. The sequence of these loop regions in all predicted tertiary structure of the riboswitch in representative plant species-green algae to flowering plants-is the same, and the residues situated in these junctions are directly involved in binding thymine pyrophosphate and are conserved in all the representative species.
Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences, 2016
Hammerhead ribozymes (HHRs) are small self-cleaving RNAs, first discovered in viroids and satelli... more Hammerhead ribozymes (HHRs) are small self-cleaving RNAs, first discovered in viroids and satellite RNAs of plant viruses. They are composed of a catalytic core of conserved nucleotides flanked by three helices. More recently, hammerhead-encoding sequences have been identified in the genomes of many eukaryotes, prokaryotes and other non-viral species regulating various functions. In this study we have explored the Archaeal domain to identify HHRs using three different bioinformatics approach. Our study reveals four putative hits of HHRs type I and type II in the group Thaumarchaeota and Euryarchaeota in the Archaeal domain, one of which is the instance of HHR 1 in C. symbiosum A, already identified in a previous study. These HHRs are very similar to those previously described in terms of the conservation of their catalytic core. Based on 3-D structure analysis and free energy, these instances were concluded as putative HHRs. Our findings reveal that the catalytic core contains the conserved motifs that are essential for cleavage activity, but there are some instances in which compensatory core variations are present. However, no instances of HHRs have been found in Crenarchaeota. This study reveals a very scarce presence of HHRs in Archaea which suggests the involvement of other ncRNA elements in gene regulatory system like RNase P which are abundantly found in the Archaeal domain.
Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences, 2015
The variable surface proteins expressed by P. falciparum and P. vivax are transported to the surf... more The variable surface proteins expressed by P. falciparum and P. vivax are transported to the surface of infected erythrocyte and are exposed to the host immune system. The possibility of using variable surface proteins as a common drug target has been analyzed in both the Plasmodium species. Sequence analysis of variable surface proteins showed a low-level conservation within as well as between the species. Amino acid composition analysis revealed higher frequency of hydrophilic amino acids as compared with that of hydrophobic residues. In order to gain more insight into their diverse functional role, the three-dimensional structure was predicted using comparative modeling approach. These models were evaluated and validated by checking stereochemistry of underlying amino acids. Structural alignment of variable surface proteins by superimposing them shows less conservation. Due to differences at sequence as well as structural level, the variable surface proteins are expected to show difference in their degree of invasiveness. These differences were also cross-examined by evolutionary study, and the results obtained were in accordance with the aforesaid study. The existence of structural differences noticed in the present study showed that the variable surface proteins could not be used as a common drug target in both the malarial species. Therefore, species-specific strategy may be followed for drug targeting against variable surface proteins of P. falciparum and P. vivax.
Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine, 2015
Variation in the interval between the R-R peaks of the electrocardiogram represents the modulatio... more Variation in the interval between the R-R peaks of the electrocardiogram represents the modulation of the cardiac oscillations by the autonomic nervous system. This variation is contaminated by anomalous signals called ectopic beats, artefacts or noise which mask the true behaviour of heart rate variability. In this paper, we have proposed a combination filter of recursive impulse rejection filter and recursive 20% filter, with recursive application and preference of replacement over removal of abnormal beats to improve the pre-processing of the inter-beat intervals. We have tested this novel recursive combinational method with median method replacement to estimate the standard deviation of normal to normal (SDNN) beat intervals of congestive heart failure (CHF) and normal sinus rhythm subjects. This work discusses the improvement in pre-processing over single use of impulse rejection filter and removal of abnormal beats for heart rate variability for the estimation of SDNN and Poncaré plot descriptors (SD1, SD2, and SD1/SD2) in detail. We have found the 22 ms value of SDNN and 36 ms value of SD2 descriptor of Poincaré plot as clinical indicators in discriminating the normal cases from CHF cases. The pre-processing is also useful in calculation of Lyapunov exponent which is a nonlinear index as Lyapunov exponents calculated after proposed pre-processing modified in a way that it start following the notion of less complex behaviour of diseased states.
It is well known that an amino acid can be encoded by more than one codon, called synonymous codo... more It is well known that an amino acid can be encoded by more than one codon, called synonymous codons. The preferential use of one particular codon for coding an amino acid is referred to as codon usage bias (CUB). A quantitative analytical method, CUB and a related tool, Codon Adaptative Index have been applied to comparatively study whole genomes of a few pathogenic Trypanosomatid species. This quantitative attempt is of direct help in the comparison of qualitative features like mutational and translational selection. Pathogens of the Leishmania and Trypanosoma genus cause debilitating disease and suffering in human beings and animals. Of these, whole genome sequences are available for only five species. The complete coding sequences (CDS), highly expressed, essential and low expressed genes have all been studied for their CUB signature. The codon usage bias of essential genes and highly expressed genes show distribution similar to codon usage bias of all CDSs in Trypanosomatids. Tr...
Journal of bioinformatics and computational biology, 2013
The genome sequence of Plasmodium falciparum reveals that many metabolic pathways are unique as c... more The genome sequence of Plasmodium falciparum reveals that many metabolic pathways are unique as compared to its human host. Metabolic Network Analysis was carried out to find the essential enzymes critical for the survival of the pathogen. In the present study, choke point and load point analysis was used to locate putative targets. The identified targets were further checked to confirm that no alternate pathway or human homolog exists. Among the top 15 enzymes obtained from this analysis, we have selected P. falciparum orotidine-5'-monophosphate decarboxylase (PfODCase) enzyme as it is sequentially and structurally different from that of humans, for searching novel inhibitors. A five-point 3D pharmacophore was generated for the crystal structure of PfODCase complexes with uridine-5'-monophosphate (U5P). The binding site environment shows three H-bond acceptors, one H-bond donor and one negative ionizable feature. This pharmacophore model was used as a 3D query to perform vi...
Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy, 2013
The structure-activity relationship of the anticoagulant drug warfarin were studied by studying t... more The structure-activity relationship of the anticoagulant drug warfarin were studied by studying two enantiomeric forms (S-form and R-form) of warfarin and its protonated as well as deprotonated structures in aqueous media using density functional theory (DFT). Theoretically computed Raman and IR spectra of all the computed structures were compared and their specific vibrational spectroscopic signatures were discussed. The percentage contributions of individual normal modes of warfarin, which provides direct evidence of the different molecular activity due to change in relative atomic position of atoms in molecule, were investigated through potential energy distribution (PED). The optimized energy and molecular electrostatic potential (MEP) maps show that the S-form of the drug molecules warfarin is energetically more stable than R-form and provides higher docking opportunity for the molecular binding with the receptors in the bio-systems.
Abstract Metabolites regulate their own production by directly interacting with highly conserved ... more Abstract Metabolites regulate their own production by directly interacting with highly conserved regions of mRNA that are capable of forming discrete tertiary structures. Such regions of mRNA are called riboswitches. The thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP) riboswitch is the most common riboswitch in different organisms. The TPP is an essential coenzyme that is synthesized by the coupling of pyrimidine (hydroxymethyl pyrimidine) and thiazole (hydroxyethyl thiazole). The TPP riboswitch was searched across all possible phyla of plant kingdom by using Arabidopsis thaliana, a model organism in which TPP riboswitch is already found. The aptameric domain of the TPP riboswitch is conserved at the sequence as well as structure levels in all chosen plant species. The sequence of the noncoding RNA that acts as a riboswitch and is folded into an appropriate stem-loop hairpin secondary structure with minimum free energy is predicted by several computational tools. Most of the secondary structures are similar but not the same, because of variation in sequence size. The TPP ligand can bind to the 3' untranslated region of the aptameric sequence, between the loops P2, P4, and P5 and the region between J2/3 and J4/5. The sequence of these loop regions in all predicted tertiary structure of the riboswitch in representative plant species-green algae to flowering plants-is the same, and the residues situated in these junctions are directly involved in binding thymine pyrophosphate and are conserved in all the representative species.
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Papers by D. Swati