Identification of renal protective gut microbiome derived-metabolites in diabetic chronic kidney disease: An integrated approach using network pharmacology and molecular docking

Metabolites from the gut microbiota define molecules in the gut-kidney cross talks. However, the mechanistic pathway by which the kidneys actively sense gut metabolites and their impact on diabetic chronic kidney disease (DCKD) remains unclear. This study is an attempt to investigate the gut microbiome metabolites, their host targeting genes, and their mechanistic action against DCKD. Gut microbiome, metabolites, and host targets were extracted from the gutMgene database and metabolites from the PubChem database. DCKD targets were identified from DisGeNET, GeneCard, NCBI, and OMIM databases. Computational examination such as protein–protein interaction networks, enrichment pathway, identification of metabolites for potential targets using molecular docking, hubgene-microbes-metabolite-samplesource-substrate (HMMSS) network architecture were executed using Network analyst, ShinyGo, GeneMania, Cytoscape, Autodock tools. There were 574 microbial metabolites, 2861 DCKD targets, and 222 microbes targeting host genes. After screening, we obtained 27 final targets, which are used for computational examination. From enrichment analysis, we found NF-ΚB1, AKT1, EGFR, JUN, and RELA as the main regulators in the DCKD development through mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) pathway signalling. The (HMMSS) network analysis found F.prausnitzi, B.adolescentis, and B.distasonis probiotic bacteria that are found in the intestinal epithelium, colonic region, metabolize the substrates like tryptophan, other unknown substrates might have direct interaction with the NF-kB1 and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) targets. On docking of these target proteins with 3- Indole propionic acid (IPA) showed high binding energy affinity of -5.9 kcal/mol and -7.4kcal/mol. From this study we identified, the 3 IPA produced by F. prausnitzi A2-165 was found to have renal sensing properties inhibiting MAPK/NF-KB1 inflammatory pathway and would be useful in treating CKD in diabetics.