In silico approach to identify potential natural antimicrobial agents against multi-drug resistant bacteria

The global emergence of multi-drug resistant bacteria is increasingly limiting the effectiveness of current drugs and significantly causing treatment failure. In our previous study funded by Research and Innovation Center of Khulna University (ID-15/2019), a number of multi-drug resistant pathogenic bacteria, namely Bacillus cereus, Mammaliicoccus sciuri, Bacillus tropicus, Escherichia coli have been identified. Exploration for new antibacterial agents has become a very important endeavor, especially in recent years, considering the escalating levels of antibiotic resistance among pathogenic bacteria.In this work, at first we will identify the target proteins (key proteins that are essential for the survival of the microorganisms) of those drug resistant bacteria. Later, we will employ molecular docking using phytochemical libraries to identify novel natural inhibitors against those targeted proteins. Simultaneously, we will also perform molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to investigate the stability of protein-ligand complexes for the top phytochemical inhibitors.

• Research Project