In-silico Screening of Origanum vulgare Phytocompounds as Potential Drug Agents Against Vp35 Protein of the Ebola Virus
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Link to bioRxiv paper: http://biorxiv.org/cgi/content/short/2023.03.25.534218v1?rss=1

Authors: Saeed, M., Ashraf, A., Sabir, B., Zafar, M. O., Raza, M. H., Saif, R.

Abstract: The leading cause of the Ebola virus outbreak during 2013-16 in Western Africa was a lack of targeted anti-viral drug choices, a fast rate of mutations and the unavailability of many of the structural proteins and annotations within its genome. The surroundings of the Ebola River in DR-Congo fail to get rid of this endemic, the reason behind this was believed to be its origin from non-human primates, which made its risk assessment and tracing difficult. The Vp35 is a multifunctional protein with innate immune antagonistic properties and is considered one of the most suitable drug targets within this virus. The main motive of this study is to discover a potential anti-viral drug against the Ebola virus by targeting the aforementioned protein with different phytocompounds of oregano that have the lowest binding energies and qualifies over different simulation parameters, so firstly, molecular docking was performed on its 28 compounds using PyRx to get the best complexes with minimum binding energies e.g., -8.9Kcal/mol. Ligands with the best docking scores were gone through Lipinski's rule of five for drug likeliness potential. For the drug affirmation, molecular dynamic simulation was also performed with the best two docked complexes using NAMD/VMD to find out their conformational stability through RMSD, RMSF, Rg, SASA and H-bond analyses. Current computer-generated prediction suggested that Ursolic acid and Oleanolic acid possess potential inhibitory effects against virus replication. Furthermore, paradigm shifts of usage of natural and herbal products for treating infectious diseases are being encouraged here, However, further wet-lab experiments and clinical trials are still needed to determine the robustness of these virtually tested phytocompounds against the Vp35 protein of the Ebola virus.

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