Exploration of binding mechanism of triclosan towards cancer markers using molecular docking and molecular dynamics

The molecule 5-chloro-2-(2,4-dichlorophenoxy) phenol is well-known as Triclosan (TCS), which is also a potential endocrine disrupting synthetic chemical. TCS exposure has been connected to the control of the human enoyl-acyl carrier protein-reductase (hER), which has been linked to a range of life threatening diseases. However, other than hER, the new protein targets for TCS that are responsible for a variety of cancers are yet unclear. The goal of this work is to investigate into the protein binding patterns of TCS and proteins from various cancer signaling pathways. Discovery Studio 4.1 was used to perform molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) on the protein-triclosan complex. The proteins were first screened using CHARMM-based docking with a CDOCKER energy greater than -21.40 kcal/mol. The CDOCKER energies of Fas-associated death domain (FADD), Receptor-interacting protein 1 (RIP1), F-κB-inducing kinase (NIK), c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK), Apoptosis signal-regulating kinase 1 (ASK1), B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2), Apoptosis-inducing factor (AIF), α-tubulin, and Actin were -20.68 kcal/mol, -26.88 kcal/mol, -23.43 kcal/mol, -22.21 kcal/mol, -20.40 kcal/mol, -21.10 kcal/mol, -20.98 kcal/mol, -24.67 kcal/mol, and -23.09 kcal/mol respectively. MD was performed on the screened proteins by standard dynamics cascade tool using CHARMM Force field. The MD results were accessed using the energy-time graph, root-mean-square deviation (RMSD), and root mean square fluctuations (RMSF). The 100 conformers of α-tubulin, NIK, FADD, and RIP1 were found to have a trend of increasing RMSD, whereas Bcl-2, ASK1, AIF, Actin, and JNK proteins had lower RMSD values. In compared to FADD, AIF, and JNK, the RMSF variations of the Bcl-2, ASK1, α-tubulin, Actin, NIK, and RIP1 residues were shown to be high. Similar patterns were seen in the energy variations, which range from 1000 kcal/mol to 2000 kcal/mol. RIP1 and Bcl-2 showed more variation in the sidechain RMSF in comparison to FADD, ASK1, AIF, Actin, α-tubulin, NIK and JNK. Thus, it can be postulated that AIF and JNK proteins of apoptosis signaling pathway are pivotal in the TCS mediated reactions.