scholarly journals Halogen bonding: an underestimated player in membrane-ligand interactions

Author(s):  
Rafael Nunes ◽  
Diogo Vila Viçosa ◽  
Paulo J. Costa

<div>Halogen bonds (XBs) are noncovalent interactions where halogen atoms act as electrophilic species interacting with Lewis bases. These interactions are relevant in biochemical systems being increasingly explored in drug discovery, mainly to moduate protein–ligand interactions. In this work, we report evidence for the existence of XB-mediated phospholipid–halogen recognition phenomena as our molecular dynamics simulations support the existence of favorable interactions between halobenzene derivatives and both phosphate or ester oxygen acceptors from model phospholipid bilayers. We also provide insights into the role of XBs in driving the permeation of halogenated small molecules across biological membranes. This represents a relevant molecular mechanism, previously overlooked, eventually determining the pharmacological or toxicological activity of halogenated compounds and hence with implications in drug discovery and development, a place where such species account for a significant part of the chemical space. Our data strongly suggests that, as the ubiquitous hydrogen bond, XBs should be accounted for in the development of membrane permeability models.</div>

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Nunes ◽  
Diogo Vila Viçosa ◽  
Paulo J. Costa

<div>Halogen bonds (XBs) are noncovalent interactions where halogen atoms act as electrophilic species interacting with Lewis bases. These interactions are relevant in biochemical systems being increasingly explored in drug discovery, mainly to moduate protein–ligand interactions. In this work, we report evidence for the existence of XB-mediated phospholipid–halogen recognition phenomena as our molecular dynamics simulations support the existence of favorable interactions between halobenzene derivatives and both phosphate or ester oxygen acceptors from model phospholipid bilayers. We also provide insights into the role of XBs in driving the permeation of halogenated small molecules across biological membranes. This represents a relevant molecular mechanism, previously overlooked, eventually determining the pharmacological or toxicological activity of halogenated compounds and hence with implications in drug discovery and development, a place where such species account for a significant part of the chemical space. Our data strongly suggests that, as the ubiquitous hydrogen bond, XBs should be accounted for in the development of membrane permeability models.</div>


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Nunes ◽  
Diogo Vila Viçosa ◽  
Paulo J. Costa

<div>Halogen bonds (HaBs) are noncovalent interactions where halogen atoms act as electrophilic species interacting with Lewis bases. These interactions are relevant in biochemical systems being increasingly explored in drug discovery, mainly to modulate protein–ligand interactions. In this work, we report evidence for the existence of HaB-mediated halogen–phospholipid recognition phenomena as our molecular dynamics simulations support the existence of favorable interactions between halobenzene derivatives and both phosphate (PO) or ester (CO) oxygen acceptors from model phospholipid bilayers, thus providing insights into the role of HaBs in driving the permeation of halogenated drug like molecules across biological membranes. This represents a relevant molecular mechanism, previously overlooked, determining the pharmacological activity of halogenated molecules with implications in drug discovery and development, a place where halogenated molecules account for a significant part of the chemical space. Our data also shows that, as the ubiquitous hydrogen bond, HaBs should be accounted for in the development of membrane permeability models.</div>


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael Nunes ◽  
Diogo Vila Viçosa ◽  
Paulo J. Costa

<div>Halogen bonds (XBs) are noncovalent interactions where halogen atoms act as electrophilic species interacting with Lewis bases. These interactions are relevant in biochemical systems being increasingly explored in drug discovery, mainly to modulate protein–ligand interactions, but are also found in engineered protein or nucleic acid systems. In this work, we report direct evidence for the existence of XBs in the context of biological membrane systems thus expanding the scope of application of these interactions. Indeed, our molecular dynamics simulations show the presence of favorable interactions between halobenzene derivatives and both phosphate or ester oxygen acceptors from model phospholipid bilayers, thus supporting the existence of XB mediated phospholipid–halogen recognition phenomena influencing the membrane insertion profile of the ligands and their orientational preferences. This represents a relevant interaction, previously overlooked, eventually determining the pharmacological or toxicological activity of halogenated compounds and hence with potential implications in drug discovery and development, a place where such species account for a significant part of the chemical space. We also provide insights into a potential role for XBs in water-to membrane insertion of halogenated ligands as XBs are systematically observed during this process. Therefore, our data strongly suggests that, as the ubiquitous hydrogen bond, XBs should be accounted for in the development of membrane partition models.</div>


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (26) ◽  
pp. 4964-4983 ◽  
Author(s):  
CongBao Kang

Solution NMR spectroscopy plays important roles in understanding protein structures, dynamics and protein-protein/ligand interactions. In a target-based drug discovery project, NMR can serve an important function in hit identification and lead optimization. Fluorine is a valuable probe for evaluating protein conformational changes and protein-ligand interactions. Accumulated studies demonstrate that 19F-NMR can play important roles in fragment- based drug discovery (FBDD) and probing protein-ligand interactions. This review summarizes the application of 19F-NMR in understanding protein-ligand interactions and drug discovery. Several examples are included to show the roles of 19F-NMR in confirming identified hits/leads in the drug discovery process. In addition to identifying hits from fluorinecontaining compound libraries, 19F-NMR will play an important role in drug discovery by providing a fast and robust way in novel hit identification. This technique can be used for ranking compounds with different binding affinities and is particularly useful for screening competitive compounds when a reference ligand is available.


2013 ◽  
Vol 19 (11) ◽  
pp. 5015-5030 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yingtao Liu ◽  
Zhijian Xu ◽  
Zhuo Yang ◽  
Kaixian Chen ◽  
Weiliang Zhu

2021 ◽  
Vol 35 (08) ◽  
pp. 2130002
Author(s):  
Connor J. Morris ◽  
Dennis Della Corte

Molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) are powerful tools used to investigate protein-ligand interactions. Molecular docking programs predict the binding pose and affinity of a protein-ligand complex, while MD can be used to incorporate flexibility into docking calculations and gain further information on the kinetics and stability of the protein-ligand bond. This review covers state-of-the-art methods of using molecular docking and MD to explore protein-ligand interactions, with emphasis on application to drug discovery. We also call for further research on combining common molecular docking and MD methods.


2020 ◽  
Vol 36 (20) ◽  
pp. 5104-5106
Author(s):  
Kirill Zinovjev ◽  
Marc W van der Kamp

Abstract Motivation Experimental structural data can allow detailed insight into protein structure and protein–ligand interactions, which is crucial for many areas of bioscience, including drug design and enzyme engineering. Typically, however, little more than a static picture of protein–ligand interactions is obtained, whereas dynamical information is often required for deeper understanding and to assess the effect of mutations. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations can provide such information, but setting up and running these simulations is not straightforward and requires expert knowledge. There is thus a need for a tool that makes protein–ligand simulation easily accessible to non-expert users. Results We present Enlighten2: efficient simulation protocols for protein–ligand systems alongside a user-friendly plugin to the popular visualization program PyMOL. With Enlighten2, non-expert users can straightforwardly run and visualize MD simulations on protein–ligand models of interest. There is no need to learn new programs and all underlying tools are free and open source. Availability and implementation The Enlighten2 Python package and PyMOL plugin are free to use under the GPL3.0 licence and can be found at https://enlighten2.github.io. We also provide a lightweight Docker image via DockerHub that includes Enlighten2 with all the required utilities.


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