The present art of drug discovery and design of new drugs is based on suicidal irreversible inhibitors. Covalent inhibition is the strategy that is used to achieve irreversible inhibition. Irreversible inhibitors interact with their targets in a time-dependent fashion, and the reaction proceeds to completion rather than to equilibrium. Covalent inhibitors possessed some significant advantages over non-covalent inhibitors such as covalent warheads can target rare, non-conserved residue of a particular target protein and thus led to development of highly selective inhibitors, covalent inhibitors can be effective in targeting proteins with shallow binding cleavage which will led to development of novel inhibitors with increased potency than non-covalent inhibitors. Several computational approaches have been developed to simulate covalent interactions; however, this is still a challenging area to explore. Covalent molecular docking has been recently implemented in the computer-aided drug design workflows to describe covalent interactions between inhibitors and biological targets. In this review we highlight: (i) covalent interactions in biomolecular systems; (ii) the mathematical framework of covalent molecular docking; (iii) implementation of covalent docking protocol in drug design workflows; (iv) applications covalent docking: case studies and (v) shortcomings and future perspectives of covalent docking. To the best of our knowledge; this review is the first account that highlights different aspects of covalent docking with its merits and pitfalls. We believe that the method and applications highlighted in this study will help future efforts towards the design of irreversible inhibitors.
We report the synthesis
and crystal structures of three new copper(II)
Schiff-base complexes. The complexes have been characterized by elemental
analysis and Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) and UV–visible
spectroscopies. The X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis reveals that
complexes 1 and 3 crystallize in a monoclinic
space group C2/c and 2 in a triclinic space group P1̅, each adopting
a square planar geometry around the metal center. We use a density
functional theory method to explore the quantum chemical properties
of these complexes. The calculation proceeds with the three-dimensional
(3D) crystal structure characterization of the complexes in which
the calculated IR and UV–vis values are comparable to the experimental
results. Charge distribution and molecular orbital analyses enabled
quantum chemical property prediction of these complexes. We study
the drug-likeness properties and binding potentials of the synthesized
complexes. The in silico outcome showed that they could serve as permeability-glycoprotein
(P-gp) and different cytochrome P450 substrates. Our calculations
showed that the complexes significantly bind to cytochrome P450 3A4.
Flap motif and its dynamics were extensively reported in aspartate proteases, e.g. HIV proteases and plasmepsins. Herein, we report the first account of flap dynamics amongst different conformations of β-secretase using molecular dynamics simulation. Various parameters were proposed and a selected few were picked which could appropriately describe the flap motion. Three systems were studied, namely Free (BACEFree) and two ligand-bound conformations, which belonged to space groups P6122 (BACEBound1) and C2221 (BACEBound2), respectively and four parameters (distance between the flaps tip residue, Thr72 and Ser325, d1; dihedral angle, ϕ (Thr72-Asp32-Asp228-Ser325); TriCα angles, θ1 (Thr72-Asp32-Ser325), and θ2 (Thr72-Asp228-Ser325)) were proposed to understand the change in dynamics of flap domain and the extent of flap opening and closing. Analysis of, θ2, d1, θ1 and ϕ confirmed that the BACEFree adopted semi-open, open and closed conformations with slight twisting during flap opening. However, BACEBound1 (P6122) showed an adaptation to open conformation due to lack of hydrogen bond interaction between the ligand and flap tip residue. A slight flap twisting, ϕ (lateral twisting) was observed for BACEBound1 during flap opening which correlates with the opening of BACEFree. Contradictory to the BACEBound1, the BACEBound2 locked the flap in a closed conformation throughout the simulation due to formation of a stable hydrogen bond interaction between the flap tip residue and ligand. Analyses of all three systems highlight that d1, θ2 and ϕ can be precisely used to describe the extent of flap opening and closing concurrently with snapshots along the molecular dynamics trajectory across several conformations of β-secretase.
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