In silico investigation of Y220C mutant p53 for lead design

Abstract

p53 protein coded by the Tp53 gene is considered as one of the most intensively researched protein and mainly due to its role as a tumor suppressor, it acts as a tumor suppressor by carrying out two biologically complex processes namely Cell cycle arrest and apoptosis, In the oncogenic Y220C mutant p53, tyrosine is replaced by cysteine at 220th residue of the DNA binding Domain which causes the formation of a surface crevice, this specific mutation is responsible for approx. 100,000 cancer cases per year due to the destabilization and denaturation of the protein, as a result, the protein degrades at room temperature. In this work we carry out intensive Molecular Dynamic Simulations and Molecular Docking Studies to understand the structural dynamics of wild type p53 and changes the occurs in the mutant protein and also try to design lead against the druggable crevice and at the end of our study we used fragment-based optimization to come up with lead molecules which can act as scaffold for further drug development process