MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionary conserved, small non-coding RNA with size ranging from 19 to 24 nucleotides. They endogenously regulate the gene expression at the post transcriptional level either through translation repression or mRNA degradation. MiRNAs have shown the potential to be used as a biomarker for the diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy of infectious diseases. Many miRNAs have shown significantly altered expression during infection. The altered expression of miRNA level in an infected human can be identified by the use of advanced diagnostic tools. In this review, we have highlighted the use of miRNA as an emerging tool for the identification of the human infectious disease. Till date, several miRNAs have been reported as a molecular biomarker in infectious diseases, such as miRNA-150 and miRNA-146b-5p in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV); miRNA-122, miRNA-21, and miRNA-34a in hepatitis; miRNA-361-5p and miRNA-29c in tuberculosis; miRNA-16 and miRNA-451 in malaria and miRNA-181 in Helicobacter pylori infection. The diagnosis of infection with the help of a biomarker is a non-invasive tool that has shown to have a key role in early diagnosis of infection. The discovery of circulating miRNA in the blood of infected patients has the potential to become a powerful non-invasive biomarker in coming future.

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Malaria is an endemic disease caused by the protozoan parasite Plasomodium falciparum. Febrifugine analogues are natural compound obtained from the traditional Chinese herbs have shown significant antimalarial and anticancerous efficacy in experimental model. Development of resistance against the existing antimalarial drug has alarmed the scientific innovators to find a potential antimalarial molecule which can be further used by endemic countries for the elimination of this disease. In this study, structure-based virtual screening and molecular dynamics (MD) base approaches were used to generate potential antimalarial compound against plasmepsin II and prolyl-tRNA synthetase of Plasmodium. Here, we have docked series of febrifugine analogues (n = 11,395) against plasmepsin II in three different docking modes and then it was compared with previously reported target prolyl-tRNA synthetase. Extra precision docking resulted into 235 ligands having better docking score were subject for QikProp analysis. Better ligands (n = 39) obtained from QikProp analysis were subject for ADMET prediction and docking protocol validation through the estimation of receiver operator characteristics. In the later stage, 24 ligands obtained from ADMET study were subject for the estimation of binding energy through MM-GBSA and same were also docked against prolyl-tRNA synthetase to get compounds with dual inhibitor role. Finally, MD simulation and 2D fingerprint MACCS study of two best ligands have shown significant interaction with plasmepsin II and homology against known active ligand with noteworthy MACCS index, respectively. This study concludes that FA12 could be potential drug candidate to fight against Plasmodium falciparum parasites.