In Silico Survey and Characterization of Functional and Non-Functional Proteases

Human babesiosis caused by the intraerythrocytic apicomplexan is an expanding tick-borne zoonotic disease that may cause severe symptoms and death in elderly or immunocompromised individuals. In light of an increasing resistance of to drugs, there is a lack of therapeutic alternatives. Species-specific proteases are essential for parasite survival and possible chemotherapeutic targets. However, the repertoire of proteases in remains poorly investigated. Herein, we employed several combined bioinformatics tools and strategies to organize and identify genes encoding for the full repertoire of proteases in the genome. We identified 64 active proteases and 25 nonactive protease homologs. These proteases can be classified into cysteine ( = 28), serine ( = 21), threonine ( = 14), asparagine ( = 7), and metallopeptidases ( = 19), which, in turn, are assigned to a total of 38 peptidase families. Comparative studies between the repertoire of and proteases revealed differences among sensu stricto and sensu lato parasites that reflect their distinct evolutionary history. Overall, this data may help direct future research towards our understanding of the biology and pathogenicity of parasites and to explore proteases as targets for developing novel therapeutic interventions.