A comprehensive approach to discover Toxin-Antitoxin systems from human pathogen Helicobacter pylori: A poison and its antidote encapsulated in the genome

An enormous presence and their identified role as stress managers, antibiotic resistance, persistence, and biofilm formation is the reason why the research on Toxin-Antitoxin (TA) loci is getting more and more emphasis. These set of genes consist of poison (Toxin) and its antidote (Antitoxin) expressing in an operon where the toxin inhibits the cellular process and antitoxin which can be a protein or non-coding RNA, rescues the toxin. Most recent progress in genomics and in silico studies have revealed new TA families, and types of TA on bacterial chromosome. However, there is almost no or very little is known about the TA in H. pylori. Therefore, this study aims to identify the TA genes in human pathogen using a comprehensive in silico approach.

Here, we have collected the genome-wide data of TA in H. pylori 26695 using TASmania, a new TA database. Further, entire TA dataset was validated with several other databases available for TA, operon analysis and experimental data available.

The study revealed the presence of 80 putative TA genes in H. pylori and highlighted their similarity as well as uniqueness in comparison to other three known TA carrying human pathogens.

The present study indicates the presence of a large number of TA genes in H. pylori which make biofilm and goes into persistence. Hence, our innovative approach unlocks the prospect for characterizing these putative TA genes and their role as stress managers.