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In silico study of peptide inhibitors against BACE 1

  • Research Article
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Systems and Synthetic Biology

Abstract

Peptides are increasingly used as inhibitors of various disease specific targets. Several naturally occurring and synthetically developed peptides are undergoing clinical trials. Our work explores the possibility of reusing the non-expressing DNA sequences to predict potential drug-target specific peptides. Recently, we experimentally demonstrated the artificial synthesis of novel proteins from non-coding regions of Escherichia coli genome. In this study, a library of synthetic peptides (Synpeps) was constructed from 2500 intergenic E. coli sequences and screened against Beta-secretase 1 protein, a known drug target for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Secondary and tertiary protein structure predictions followed by protein–protein docking studies were performed to identify the most promising enzyme inhibitors. Interacting residues and favorable binding poses of lead peptide inhibitors were studied. Though initial results are encouraging, experimental validation is required in future to develop efficient target specific inhibitors against AD.

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Acknowledgments

We sincerely thank the State Inter-University Centre of Excellence in Bioinformatics (SIUCEB), University of Kerala for the funding provided during this work.

Conflict of interest

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, University of Kerala, Thiruvananthapuram, 695581, Kerala, India

    Navya Raj, Vipin Thomas, Achuthsankar S. Nair & Pawan K. Dhar

  2. Department of Bioinformatics, Sathyabhama University, Chennai, 600119, Tamilnadu, India

    Agnes Helen & N. Manoj

  3. Lifecode Technologies Pvt. Ltd, New Delhi, 110044, India

    G. Harish

  4. Department of Life Sciences, School of Natural Sciences, Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, 201314, India

    Shailja Singh & Seema Sehrawat

  5. Sporos Therapeutics LLC, Bothell, WA, USA

    Shaguna Seth

  6. School of Biotechnology, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 110067, India

    Abhinav Grover & Pawan K. Dhar

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  1. Navya Raj
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  2. Agnes Helen
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  3. N. Manoj
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  4. G. Harish
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Correspondence to Pawan K. Dhar.

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Raj, N., Helen, A., Manoj, N. et al. In silico study of peptide inhibitors against BACE 1. Syst Synth Biol 9, 67–72 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11693-015-9169-7

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