title: Computationally identifying virulence factors based on KEGG pathways.
abstract: Virulence factors are molecules that play very important roles in enhancing the pathogen's capability in causing diseases. Many efforts were made to investigate the mechanism of virulence factors using in silico methods. In this study, we present a novel computational method to predict virulence factors by integrating protein-protein interactions in a STRING database and biological pathways in the KEGG. Three specific species were studied according to their records in the VFDB. They are Campylobacter jejuni NCTC 11168, Escherichia coli O6 : K15 : H31 536 (UPEC) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1. The prediction accuracies reached were 0.9467, 0.9575 and 0.9180, respectively. Metabolism pathways, flagellar assembly and chemotaxis may be of importance for virulence based on the analysis of the optimal feature sets we obtained. We hope this can provide some insight and guidance for related research.
authors.affiliation: Center for Translational Medicine and Jiangsu Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine, Medical School of Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Weiren
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Cui
authors.forename: Lei
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Tao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Huang
authors.forename: Qian
authors.initials: Q
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.forename: Min
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Jiang
authors.forename: Ning
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.forename: Lulu
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Zheng
authors.forename: Kaiyan
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Feng
authors.forename: Yudong
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cai
authors.forename: Hongwei
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Wang
mesh_terms: D000465:Algorithms; D016123:Campylobacter jejuni / Q000378:metabolism / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D016208:Databases, Factual; D004926:Escherichia coli / Q000378:metabolism / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D016680:Genome, Bacterial; D011550:Pseudomonas aeruginosa / Q000378:metabolism / Q000472:pathogenicity*; D037521:Virulence Factors / Q000032:analysis*
chemical_list: D037521:Virulence Factors