The study on the interaction between seryl-histidine dipeptide and proteins by circular dichroism and molecular modeling Original Research Article

The selective cleavage of proteins is very important in key biological processes. Chemical (nonenzymatic) reagents such as cyanogen bromide and transition metal complexes are used extensively with great defects. In this paper, the binding of seryl-histidine dipeptide (abbreviated as SH) with bovine serum albumin (BSA) and lysozyme were investigated by the circular dichroism spectroscopy (CD) at 298 K, molecular docking studies and quantum chemical calculations based on the previous results of polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE). From the studies of CD, it showed that SH interacted strongly with BSA and lysozyme. The change percentages of the secondary structures of BSA and lysozyme were calculated. The contents of the β-sheets decreased remarkably. It indicated that the interactions between SH and proteins could break the hydrogen bonds of β-sheets selectively. The docking studies between SH and BSA showed that the position of the oxygen atom of the hydroxyl group of SH (O12) was in favor of a nucleophilic attack on carbon atom of the amide bond of a β-sheet (C34) because the distance between O12 and C34 was 3.37 Å. Natural charges, natural atomic hybrid percentages and square sums of HOMO coefficients calculated by the NBO and population analysis at HF/6-31G* supported the suggested mechanism. And so SH may be an interesting agent for the therapeutic use.