Comparative In Silico Analysis of Serine/Threonine Protein Kinase in Enterococcus faecium

• Main Author: Naqib, Ahmad Ghazali
• Format: Final Year Project Report
• Language: English; English
• Published: Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, (UNIMAS) 2022
• Subjects: QP Physiology
• Online Access: http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39863/1/NAQIB%20BIN%20AHMAD%20GHAZALI%2024pgs.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39863/2/NAQIB%20BIN%20AHMAD%20GHAZALI%20ft.pdf; http://ir.unimas.my/id/eprint/39863/

Enterococcus faecium is well distinguished for its ability to cause detrimental health issues including death among humans. Serine/threonine protein kinase gene, stk is a virulent gene present in the genome of E. faecium and the gene is believed to be the regulating factor which causes this condition, by possessing the ability to activate antibiotic resistance, virulence, and biofilm formation of E. faecium. Several genomic comparative analysis studies were conducted by various researchers to understand this detrimental mechanism. However, none of the studies are focussing on how serine/threonine protein kinase gene in the enterococci is regulating its antibiotic resistance, virulence, and biofilm formation property. This study aims to generate thorough understanding of the role of stk gene in the activation of those properties through the analysis of phylogeny, domain, and virulence genes in the bacterium. Advanced software and bioinformatic tools including MEGA11.0, Virulence Finder Database, ResFinder, CARD, and tools available from NCBI were utilized to achieve this aim. This study has provided evidence for the significant use of 16s rRNA in conducting phylogenetic analysis of E. faecium as clustering of the strains according to their isolates can be observed more clearly in the phylogenetic tree constructed using this gene compared to using stk gene. The domains of Stk in E. faecium are found to be very conserved based on the highly consistent E-values obtained, and insights of virulence genes present in the bacterium are exhibited as the essential outcome of virulence gene mining as the virulence factors regulated by stk gene were identified. This study enables stk to be made as target gene in an effective approach to control enterococcal infections in the future.