When antibiotics were first introduced in the 1940’s, they were hailed as miracle drugs, and quickly provided effective therapy for many of the more dangerous pathogens then prevalent. However, resistance to these antimicrobials developed quickly. The World Health Organisation report into antimicrobial resistance published online, notes that formerly curable bacterial diseases are on the increase. For example, 98% of all South-East Asian gonorrhoea cases are presently multi-drug resistant, while up to 60% of nosocomial infections in the developed world are caused by drug-resistant and often opportunistic pathogens. Infections with rare virulent micro-organisms like Acinetobacter are also on the increase and opportunistic bacterial infections such as Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Salmonella spp. are becoming more common. Several factors contributing to this phenomenon during five decades of antibiotic mishandling have included: health workers misdiagnosing illness or providing the wrong prescription, patients failing to adhere to treatment, and the misuse of antimicrobials in animals with secondary effects observed in humans. To help counteract these problems, advances in technology can be used to hasten the hunt for new drug and vaccine targets. Bioinformatics itself can be defined as utilising large databases of biological information with specific in silico tools to complement traditional wet laboratory-based biology.

Genomes, Putative Target Database, endonuclease fragments,Perl and Bioperl.

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