In pathogenic bacteria, identification of essential proteins which are non-homologous to the host plants represents potential antimicrobial targets. We applied subtractive genomics approach for the identification of novel antimicrobial targets in Xanthomonas oryzae pv. oryzae PXO99A, the causative agent of bacterial blight in rice. Comparative analysis was performed through BLAST available with the NCBI. The analysis revealed that 27 essential protein sequences out of 4,988 sequences of X. oryzae pv. oryzae PXO99A are non-homologous to Oryza sativa. Subsequent analysis of 27 essential proteins revealed their involvement in different metabolic activities such as transport activity, DNA binding, structural constituent of ribosome, cell division, translation, and plasma membrane. These 27 proteins were analyzed for virulence and novelty and out of 27, three essential non-homologous proteins were found to be the novel antimicrobial targets.
Keywords: Essential genes; Pathogen; Rice; Subtractive genomics; Xanthomonas oryzae.