Search results for "Binding pocket"
showing 6 items of 6 documents
Site-directed mutagenesis of odorant-binding proteins
2020
Modifying the affinity of odorant-binding proteins (OBPs) to small ligands by replacement of specific residues in the binding pocket may lead to several technological applications. Thanks to their compact and stable structures, OBPs are currently regarded as the best candidates to be used in biosensing elements for odorants and volatiles detection. The wide and rich information on the structure of these proteins both in their apo-forms and in complexes with specific ligands provides guidelines to design reliable mutants to monitor specific targets. The same engineered proteins may also find applications in the slow release of pheromones and other chemicals in the environment, as well as in …
Dynamic-shared Pharmacophore Approach as Tool to Design New Allosteric PRC2 Inhibitors, Targeting EED Binding Pocket.
2020
Abstract: The Polycomb Repressive complex 2 (PRC2) maintains a repressive chromatin state and silences many genes, acting as methylase on histone tails. This enzyme was found overexpressed in many types of cancer. In this work, we have set up a Computer-Aided Drug Design approach based on the allosteric modulation of PRC2. In order to minimize the possible bias derived from using a single set of coordinates within the protein-ligand complex, a dynamic workflow was developed. In details, molecular dynamic was used as tool to identify the most significant ligand-protein interactions from several crystallized protein structures. The identified features were used for the creation of dynamic pha…
Getting Docking into Shape Using Negative Image-Based Rescoring
2019
The failure of default scoring functions to ensure virtual screening enrichment is a persistent problem for the molecular docking algorithms used in the structure-based drug discovery. To remedy this problem, elaborate rescoring and post-processing schemes have been developed with a varying degree of success, specificity, and cost. The negative imagebased rescoring (R-NiB) has been shown to improve the flexible docking performance markedly with a variety of drug targets.The yield improvement is achieved by comparing the alternative docking poses against the negative image of the target protein’s ligand-binding cavity. In other words, the shape and electrostatics of the binding pocket is dir…
Hsp60, a Novel Target for Antitumor Therapy: Structure-Function Features and Prospective Drugs Design
2013
Heat shock protein 60 kDa (Hsp60) is a chaperone classically believed to be involved in assisting the correct folding of other mitochondrial proteins. Hsp60 also plays a role in cytoprotection against cell stressors, displaying for example, antiapoptotic potential. Despite the plethora of studies devoted to the mechanism of Hsp60's function, especially in prokaryotes, fundamental issues still remain unexplored, including the definition of its role in cancer. Key questions still unanswered pertain to the differences in structure-function features that might exist between the well-studied prokaryotic GroEL and the largely unexplored eukaryotic Hsp60 proteins. In this article we discuss these …