Molecular docking of some peptides to varicella zoster virus drug targets

Abstract EN

Varicella-zoster virus (VZV), a neurotropic herpesvirus, is the causative agent of both varicella (chickenpox) and zoster (shingles).

Like another herpes viruses, the VZV can cause both acute illness and latency lifelong.

In other hand, the VZV common during childhood, especially in temperate climates.

Moreover, Varicella is usually a benign and self-limiting illness.

But may be more severe in adults, and in patients suffering from immunedeficiency.

Because of the huge information available concerning inhibitors of this virus the current study spots light on them bypredicting the best peptides that can be a candidate to offer to wet laboratory experiments sufficient data about their ability to treat VZV.

To acheve this aim several antimicrobial peptides and antiviral peptides used to predict their theoretical actions against three targets of VZV, Thymidine kinase (PDBID: 1OSN), Envelope glycoprotein H (PDBID: 4XHJ), Protease (PDBID: 1VZV) using Bioinformatics approach.

And the binding potential of these peptides with the VZV drug targets was predicted using online program Hex 8.0.0.

, and some physical and chemical properites of peptides were predicted by specific programs, including T cell epitope Class I immunogenicity software, ToxinPred software, CellPPD software, isoelectric points (PI) and molecular weight, Boman index values software, and anti-cp software.

The analysis of these data resulted with that from 64 antimicrobial peptide only 11 peptides have been found have favored binding affinities with VZV targets and good physical and chemical properties, these peptides were Polyphemusin 2, K4S4(1-16) a, F, AVP1092, MSI-78, A, Fv16, GLK-19, Magainin 1, Dahlen 5.6.