Development of pipelines for prospecting plant bioactive peptides with antithrombotic effects
Molecular Mimicry; Anticoagulant; Thrombin Inhibitor; Viridiplantae; Plant antithrombotics; Bioinformatics.
Plants offer a vast potential as a source of active substances, allowing for the incorporation of many extracts or purified substances into modern therapeutic practices. The isolation of peptides, small amino acid polymers, with biological activity has sparked interest in potential pharmaceutical or nutraceutical applications. Several databases and pipelines are available and dedicated to organizing information and discovering new peptides. Computational methods have been developed to turn process of discovering potential candidates faster and easyer. Cardiovascular diseases are the leading cause of death worldwide, often requiring the use of antithrombotic drugs in treatment. The development of new antithrombotics is necessary to address the limitations of available therapies and provide more effective treatments for patients. Thus, this project aims to develop a pipeline for prospecting new bioactive peptides of plant origin and evaluating candidate peptides for antithrombotic activity, based on the mechanisms of action of known peptides. The pipeline is being developed in Python code, shared on GitHub, and integrates information from the CATH structural domain database, an essential step for searching for peptides with possible molecular mimicry. As part of the methodology, a case study was conducted using a 6-amino acid antithrombotic peptide from peanuts. Results identified 25 new candidates with potential anticoagulant activity. These peptides were ranked based on comparison with the peanut sequence using scores from the BLOSUM62 similarity matrix. Among future prospects, we aim to analyze the peptides found for their interaction with biological targets. Additionally, we intend to continue developing the pipeline to create an easily configurable and usable tool for searching for new bioactive plant peptides.