Computational Identification of Cell Surface Antigens in Streptococcus pneumoniae

Streptococcus pneumoniae is responsible for pneumonia especially in children and several strains reported to be resistant to prophylactic drugs and hence demands for better prevention than cure. In view of vaccine development, genome of Streptococcus pneumoniae provided us the opportunity for locating several surface antigens involving bioinformatics approach. In our study, programs like SignalP3.0, LipoP1.0, TMHMM, FuzzPro and BLASTP searched out highly conserved surface antigens as lipoprotein and cell wall anchored proteins, and highlighted 50 prominent surface antigens which may be involved in subunit vaccine development programs.