Structural analysis of hiv-2 reverse transcriptase and its docking with phytochemicals

Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) is a rapidly expanding global pandemic. Despite more than a decade of intense research to understand the HIV pathogenesis aimed at developing an effective therapy for AIDS, achieving a true eradication of HIV remains a daunting challenge. However, significant progress has been made in the management of HIV-1 replication using potent inhibitors. HIV-2 serotype of HIV was determined to be a cause of disease in the parts of the West African population, and there is evidence for its spread to Europe and Asia. It has also been found that HIV-2 reverse transcriptase (RT) demonstrates intrinsic resistance to non-nucleoside RT inhibitors, one of the two classes of anti- AIDS drugs that target the viral RT. The given article is an attempt towards designing a potent drug that can block the activity of HIV-2 RT. This has been achieved by conducting a comparative analysis between the reverse transcriptase from the two strains of HIV viz. HIV-1 and HIV-2. After the comparative analysis of two genomes and structure of the enzyme, molecular docking of the HIV-2 RT was performed using phytochemicals in order to gain insights pertaining to mechanism of binding of the ligand to the receptor. Docking results revealed that Curcumin, Astralgin and Tiliroside bind to pocket 2 (Pkt 2) with higher binding energies as compared to pocket1 (Pkt1).