A novel approach for profiling of nature-inspired and bioactive proteins and peptides isolated from selected medicinal plants and their implications in Alzheimer diseases by in-silico analysis

Abstract

This study reported the profiling and the in-silico analysis of the therapeutic potential of proteins/peptides (for Alzheimer disease) isolated from Tinospora cordifolia, Evolvulus alsinoides, Centella asiatica and Convolvulus pluricaulis. The proteins/peptides were extracted by using four different pH based buffer solutions. The trypsin digested proteins/peptides were analyzed by LC-MS/MS based peptide mass fingerprinting which showed the presence of high number of proteins/peptides involved in regulating the oxidative stress. The sequential purification with 10 kDa and 3 kDa cut-off ultrafiltration membranes for buffer based extracted proteins/peptides was performed. The evaluation of crude and these filtrates revealed the highest antioxidant potential for 3 kDa cut-off filtrate of 0.1 M Tris HCl buffer (pH 8.0) from FRAP, DPPH, ABTS and NOS assays. The presence of peptides in 3 kDa cut-off filtrates was detected by HPLC, identified by MALDI-TOF MS and the fragmentation pattern was obtained by LC-MS/MS. The in-silico docking study revealed that the identified peptides showed the highest binding affinity against the Alzheimer targets (BACE1, nAChR, Aβ, AChE, GSK-3β, JNK). Thus, the findings of this study provided the preliminary evidence for the antioxidant and neuroprotective potential of the selected medicinal plants, by supporting their relevance in delaying the onset of neurodegeneration and highlighting their prospects for drug development.