Topics Covered: Indigenization and development of new technology, Biotechnology related issues.
Reverse Vaccinology
What to study?
For Prelims and Mains: How it works, significance and concerns.
Context: Researchers from Tamil Nadu have developed a vaccine candidate against SARS-CoV-2 through ‘reverse vaccinology’.
Previously, Reverse vaccinology has been used for developing vaccinations for meningococcal and staphylococcal infections.
What is reverse vaccinology?
- Reverse vaccinology defines the process of antigen discovery starting from genome information.
- This is done with the aid of computers without culturing microorganism.
- The process includes comparative in silico analyses of multiple genome sequences in order to identify conserved antigens within a heterogeneous pathogen population and identification of antigens that are unique to pathogenic isolates but not present in commensal strains.
- In addition, transcriptomic and proteomic data sets are integrated into a selection process that yields a short list of candidate antigens to be tested in animal models, thus reducing the costs and time of downstream analyses.
Pros:
Finding vaccine targets quickly and efficiently.
Cons:
Only proteins can be targeted using this process. Whereas, conventional vaccinology approaches can find other biomolecular targets such as polysaccharides.
Sources: the Hindu.
