bioRxiv Science⌕ Search
Home/Archive/bioRxiv

bioRxiv · 10.1101/2021.05.31.446388

Mechanistic insights into the Japanese Encephalitis Virus RNA dependent RNA polymerase protein inhibition by bioflavonoids from Azadirachta indica

Dwivedi, V. D.·Singh, A.·El-Kafraway, S. A.·Alandijany, T. A.·Bajrai, L. H.·Kamal, M. A.·Azhar, E. I.
View original source ↗Export metadata ↓

Abstract

Japanese encephalitis (JE) virus, belongs to the genus flavivirus, is a major cause of viral encephalitis, which results in neurological damage. RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) protein is the sole enzyme responsible for viral genome replication in RNA viruses and serves as an excellent target for anti-viral therapeutic development, as its homolog is not present in humans. In this study, the crystal structure of JE RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (jRdRp) protein was obtained from protein data bank while 43 by bioflavonoids reported in Azadirachta indica were retrieved from the PubChem database. Following, structure based virtual screening was employed using MTiOpenScreen server and top four compounds, viz. Gedunin, Nimbolide, Ohchinin acetate, and Kulactone, with the most negative docking scores (> -10 kcal/mol) conformations were redocked using AutoDock Vina; these complexes showed mechanistic interactions with Arg474, Gly605, Asp668, and Trp800 residues in the active site of jRdRp protein against reference ligand, i.e., Guanosine-5-Triphosphate. Furthermore, 100 ns classical molecular dynamics simulation and binding free energy calculation showed considerable stability (via hydrogen bonding and hydrophobic interactions) of docked bioflavonoids in the active pocket of jRdRp and significant contribution of van der Waals interactions for docked complex stability during simulation, respectively. Therefore, the outcome of this study predicted the substantial anti-viral activity of Gedunin, Nimbolide, Ohchinin acetate, and Kulactone against jRdRp protein and can be considered for further antiviral drug development.

Source connections

Explore related subjects

bioinformaticsPreprint

Keep this discovery

Explore connections, maps & timelines

BibTeXRIS

Dwivedi, V. D., Singh, A., El-Kafraway, S. A., Alandijany, T. A., Bajrai, L. H., Kamal, M. A., Azhar, E. I.. 2021-05-31. Mechanistic insights into the Japanese Encephalitis Virus RNA dependent RNA polymerase protein inhibition by bioflavonoids from Azadirachta indica. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.31.446388

Cite the original work for its findings. Save a collection to share your selection of sources.

KEEP EXPLORING

Related preprints

bioRxiv2026

StableProt: Structure-Aware Deep Learning for Protein Thermostability (Tm) and Environmental Adaptation (OGT) Prediction

Predicting protein melting temperature (Tm) and organismal optimal growth temperature (OGT) is essential for enzyme engineering, biocatalyst design, and metagenomic bioprospecting, yet computational prediction faces several fundamental bottlenecks: sequence-only representations miss tertiary packing; dual-task coupling induces destructive gradient conflict; natural database skew (>87% mesophiles) drives mesophilic collapse; and existing tools produce uncalibrated point predictions. To address these challenges, we present StableProt, a structure-aware framework that couples amino acid sequences with Foldseek 3Di structural tokens via a frozen SaProt backbone to capture 3D contacts. Disjoint heads condition thermodynamic stability on ecological context without gradient conflict, while targeted 14% mesophilic subsampling expands thermophile representation to eliminate mesophilic collapse. Calibrated ensemble modeling reduces calibration error to 1.92%, providing dependable 95% confidence intervals. Evaluating models across 10{degrees}C temperature intervals reveals severe baseline collapse at thermal extremes, whereas StableProt maintains robust accuracy across regimes. On ProThermDB and zero-shot FireProtDB, StableProt achieves state-of-the-art probabilistic accuracy (CRPS = 4.52{degrees}C and 8.71{degrees}C) while recovering 92.0% of hyperthermophiles ([≥]80{degrees}C), and in prospective validation, its calibrated intervals capture both enzyme stability (75.3% coverage) and host environmental growth temperatures (78.1% coverage). StableProt is freely accessible as an interactive web server at https://stableprot.dixitlab.org/.

bioinformatics↗
bioRxiv2026

RoDPAA: A Robust Dissimilarity-Based Principal Angle Analysis Framework for Multi-View Microbiome Data Integration

Multiview microbiome studies profile the same participants across body sites or molecular layers, but integration is hampered by sparse, compositional data, modest sample sizes and methods that recognize only exact sharing. We present RoDPAA (Robust Dissimilarity-based Principal Angle Analysis), a framework that represents each view through any data-appropriate dissimilarity, such as Bray--Curtis, without log-ratio transformation or likelihood assumptions. RoDPAA aligns view-specific signal subspaces through principal angles, captures complete and partial sharing, and tests by permutation how many components are shared, using only eigendecomposition and little tuning. In Gaussian simulations, RoDPAA matched JIVE and MOFA given true ranks, ran faster and alone recovered the shared dimension in every replicate. In two inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) cohorts with sparse, zero-inflated data, Bray--Curtis-based RoDPAA recovered shared structure that was stable to prevalence filtering, whereas log-ratio-based alternatives were not. Its leading microbiome--metabolome factors, learned without disease labels, were the only ones associated with IBD.

bioinformatics↗
bioRxiv2026

Deducing splicing events from transcript sets with splicelogic

Long-read RNA sequencing captures a greater proportion of full-length transcripts, enabling more accurate isoform identification, discovery of novel isoforms, and more precise differential transcript usage analysis. However, comparing transcripts, whether between conditions or between sets such as novel and annotated isoforms, yields complex isoform changes that are hard to manipulate, summarize, and visualize. This is compounded by vertical integration of some tools, where downstream analysis depends on the specific output of a particular upstream tool. To address this gap, we have developed splicelogic, an R/Bioconductor package that makes transcript-set comparisons biologically interpretable by turning them into discrete splicing events, such as exon skipping, alternative splice sites, intron retention, and alternative transcription start and end sites. We designed splicelogic to integrate easily with existing RNA-seq workflows and tools. The splicelogic functions are modular, readable, and extensible, making it easy for users to adapt core logic to their own custom scientific questions or novel splicing definitions. By obtaining interpretable splicing events from transcript changes, splicelogic enables downstream analyses, including annotation of RNA-binding protein recognition sites, alongside summary statistics and visualization. The splicelogic package is publicly available and distributed through Bioconductor.

bioinformatics↗