Proteome mining for drug target identification in Listeria monocytogenes strain EGD-e and structure-based virtual screening of a candidate drug target penicillin binding protein 4

•In-silico approach was used to identify drug targets of Listeria monocytogenes strain EGDe.•168 putative targets were identified; of these, 30 were predicted as broad spectrum.•For target PBP4, virtual screening and ADMET filtering identified 10 lead compounds.•Reverse docking against 113 known bacterial targets identified 4 multi-target leads.

We used a combination of in-silico approaches to identify 168 promising drug targets in the proteome of a multidrug-resistant Listeria monocytogenes strain; of these, one (PBP4) was particularly promising. Virtual screening using it, followed by reverse docking, revealed four compounds namely NCI524121, CAP332797, NCI524136 and ZINC00518462 as good multi-target leads.