Comparative genomics of Bordetella pertussis and prediction of new vaccines and drug targets

Abstract

Pertussis is a highly contagious respiratory disease caused by Bordetella pertussis, a Gram-negative bacterium described over a century ago. Despite broad vaccine coverage and treatment options, the disease is remerging as a public health problem especially in infants and older children. Recent data indicate re-emergence of the disease is related to bacterial resistance to immune defences and decreased vaccine effectiveness, which obviously suggests the need of new effective vaccines and drugs. In an attempt to contribute with solutions to this great challenge, bioinformatics tools were used to genetically comprehend the species of these bacteria and predict new vaccines and drug targets. In fact, approaches were used to analysis genomic plasticity, gene synteny and species similarities between the 20 genomes of Bordetella pertussis already available. Furthermore, it was conducted reverse vaccinology and docking analysis to identify proteins with potential to become vaccine and drug targets, respectively. The analyses showed the 20 genomes belongs to a homogeneous group that has preserved most of the genes over time. Besides that, were found genomics islands and good proteins to be candidates for vaccine and drugs. Taken together, these results suggests new possibilities that may be useful to develop new vaccines and drugs that will help the prevention and treatment strategies of pertussis disease caused by these Bordetella strains.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• Bordetella pertussis
• genomic islands
• virulence factors
• reverse vaccinology
• vaccine
• drugs

Disclosure statement

All authors declare that they have no competing interests with this manuscript.

Data accessibility

The genomes are available at GenBank as described in table 1.

Authors’ contributions

A.G.F. performed the download, all data processing and analysis, participated in the study design and wrote this manuscript; L.G.A, L.N.Q.S, I.K. helped in the processing and data analysis; F.L.Z. helped in the data processing and in the writing this manuscript; T.C.V.R, S.T, F.M.M, V.A, R.T.J.R. helped in the execution of the docking analyses; A.K.J. helped in the preparation, execution of the docking analyses and helped in the writing of this manuscript; L.C.S.P; C.J.O. participated in manuscript review by contributing suggestions and corrections; L.d.J.B. coordinated the study, helped with data analysis, and write this manuscript; S.d.C.S. designed, coordinated the study, helped with analysis and write this manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado Minas Gerais (FAPEMIG; Grant Number: APQ-01323-15), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) and Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES; Finance code 001).