Structure-function relationship of Chikungunya nsP2 protease: A comparative study with papain

Chikungunya virus is a growing human pathogen transmitted by mosquito bite. It causes fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, joint pain, headache, and swelling in the joints. Its replication and propagation depend on the protease activity of the Chikungunya virus-nsP2 protein, which cleaves the nsP1234 polyprotein replication complex into individual functional units. The N-terminal segment of papain is structurally identical with the Chikungunya virus-nsP2 protease. Hence, molecular dynamics simulations were performed to compare molecular mechanism of these proteases. The Chikungunya virus-snP2 protease shows more conformational changes and adopts an alternate conformation. However, N-terminal segment of these two proteases has identical active site scaffold with the conserved catalytic diad. Hence, some of the non-peptide inhibitors of papain were used for induced fit docking at the active site of the nsP2 to assess the binding mode. In addition, the peptides that connect different domains/protein in Chikungunya virus poly-protein were also subjected for docking. The overall results suggest that the active site scaffold is the same in both the proteases and a possibility exists to experimentally assess the efficacy of some of the papain inhibitors to inhibit the Chikungunya virus-nsP2.