Abstract

COMPUTER AIDED PHARMACOPHORE ANALYSIS OF INHIBITORY ACTION OF PHYTOCHEMICALS AGAINST MOSQUITO ODOR RECEPTORS IN COMPARISON TO CHEMICAL DRUGS

Riya Rane, Rahul Ravichandran, Pritam Kumar Panda and Shalaka Joshi*

ABSTRACT

Mosquitoes are the tiny insects that are responsible for causing deadly diseases like malaria, dengue etc. They act as a vector for transmitting the diseases. Mosquitoes have the ability to identify human targets with the sense of odor. They have specialized olfactory receptors that help them in detecting human host. The current study deals with evaluation of selected 7 chemical compounds, 58 analogues and 14 phytochemicals against the two selected mosquito odorant receptor proteins. All selected phytochemicals are easily available in nature and maximum of them are found to be of Indian origin. Both the phytochemicals and approved chemicals can block the odorant receptors. The mosquito odorant receptor proteins of Aedes aegypti and Anopheles gambiae were docked against the selected compounds and were evaluated on the basis of binding energies. On doing comparative analysis it was found that phytochemicals are having better binding efficacy than the approved chemicals and their analogues. Thus phytochemicals can be used as a medium of inhibitor against the mosquito odorant receptors.

Keywords: Mosquito odor, Aedes aegypti, Anopheles gambiae, Virtual screening, Modeller 9v14, DEET, Phytochemicals.