Substrate binding to mammalian 15-lipoxygenase

Lipoxygenases (LOs) are implicated in the regulation of metabolic processes and in several human diseases. Revealing their exact role is hindered by an incomplete understanding of their activity, including substrate specificity and substrate alignment in the active site. Recently, it has been proposed that the change in substrate specificity for arachidonic acid (AA) or linoleic acid (LA) could be part of an auto-regulatory mechanism related to cancer grow. Kinetic differences between reactions of 15-hLO with AA and LA have also led to the suggestion that the two substrates could present mechanistic differences. In the absence of a crystal structure for the substrate:15-LO complex, here we present an atomic-level study of catalytically competent binding modes for LA to rabbit 15-LO (15-rLO-1) and compare the results to our previous work on AA. Docking calculations, molecular dynamics simulations, re-docking and cross-docking calculations are all used to analyze the differences and similarities between the binding modes of the two substrates. Interestingly, LA seems to adapt more easily to the enzyme structure and differs from AA on some dynamical aspects that could introduce kinetic differences, as observed experimentally. Still, our study concludes that, despite the different chain lengths and number of insaturations between these two physiological substrates of 15-rLO-1, the enzyme seems to catalyze their hydroperoxidation by binding them with a common binding mode that leads to similar catalytically competent complexes.