Bacterio-Informatics: Identifying the cause of Hansen’s disease and establish a remedy for the same

Leprosy or Hansen disease is a slowly progressive infection caused by Mycobacterium leprae,affecting the skin and peripheral nerves and resulting in disabling deformities. Studies show that M. lepraebinds to nasal epithelial cells in human after binding to fibronectin, using Beta-integrins (ITGB1) asreceptors. The corresponding component on M. leprae, which binds to fibronectin, Fibronectin AttachmentProtein (FAP), has been identified .The 3D structure of both the human (ITGB1) and M.leprae (FAP-L)protein involved in this mechanism are modeled using homology modeling. Hemolin, an insect-immuneprotein belonging to the immunoglobulin superfamily is found to have an efficient defense system againstbacterial infections. So this protein is selected and its 3D structure is modeled too. The active compoundAnacardic acid of marine brown alga Fucus vesiculosus and the compound Polyhydroxylated fucophloretholof Anacardium occidentale is found to have antibacterial activity. Their structure was drawn usingChemsketch, combined and converted to *.pdb. The combination is docked with Hemolin protein. Thisdocked compound is again redocked with the human ITGB1 protein using GRAMM-X.Again, the combination (Anacardic acid and Polyhydroxylated fucophlorethol) was docked with M. lepraewhich proves that the combination can be effective in curing Hansen disease.