Applying internal coordinate mechanics to model the interactions between 8R-lipoxygenase and its substrate

Lipoxygenases (LOX) play pivotal roles in the biosynthesis of leukotrienes and other biologically active potent signalling compounds. Developing inhibitors for LOX is of high interest to researchers. Modelling the interactions between LOX and its substrate arachidonic acid is critical for developing LOX specific inhibitors. Currently, there are no LOX-substrate structures. Recently, the structure of a coral LOX, 8R-LOX, which is 41% sequence identical to the human 5-LOX was solved to 1.85Å resolution. This structure provides a foundation for modelling enzyme-substrate interactions.

In this research, we applied a computational method, Internal Coordinate Mechanics (ICM), to model the interactions between 8R-LOX and its substrate arachidonic acid. Docking arachidonic acid to 8R-LOX was performed. The most favoured docked ligand conformations were retained. We compared the results of our simulation with a proposed model and concluded that the binding pocket identified in this study agrees with the proposed model partially.

The results showed that the conformation of arachidonic acid docked into the ICM-identified docking site has less energy than that docked into the manually defined docking site for pseudo wild type 8R-LOX. The mutation at I805 resulted in no docking pocket found near Fe atom. The energy of the arachidonic acid conformation docked into the manually defined docking site is higher in mutant 8R-LOX than in wild type 8R-LOX. The arachidonic acid conformations are not productive conformations.

We concluded that, for the wild type 8R-LOX, the conformation of arachidonic acid docked into the ICM-identified docking site is more stable than that docked into the manually defined docking site. Mutation affects the structure of the putative active site pocket of 8R-LOX, and leads no docking pockets around the catalytic Fe atom. The docking simulation in a mutant 8R-LOX demonstrated that the structural change due to the mutation impacts the enzyme activity. Further research and analysis is required to obtain the 8R-LOX-substrate model.