In-silico docking studies with chebulagic acid and E2 of chikungunya virus using bioinformatics tools

Abstract:

In this study, an attempt was made to identify a candidate vaccine for chikungunya treatments by fusing the coat glycoprotein E2 with the constant region of the heavy chain of IgG. The competent E-coli cells were transformed with E2 cloned pET28b vector and after that induced with IPTG to express the protein. The solubility of the protein in thepellet was confirmed and supernatant. It was further purified by phosphate buffer and refolded withSP Sepharose chromatography technique. The identified protein would be a potential vaccine candidate in future analysis. In silico docking has been advocated in drug designing aspects in pharmacological studies these days. This technique would be helpful in finding the potential binding sites in receptor molecules and assists in predicting the binding energies. Chebulagic acid has been known as a natural molecule that expressed activity inhibition against the viruses. Hence, an attempt was also tried to dock E2 structural glycoprotein with chebulagic acid. The computational software PyRxwas used to dockthis together and observed favorable binding affinity between them. This would further be explored in future studies to find a cure for the chikungunya virus.