In Silico Evaluation of Food Derived Bioactive Peptides as Inhibitors of Angiotensin Converting Enzyme (ACE)

Hypertension is declared as the major risk factor of cardiovascular diseases and stroke, and the leading cause of premature deaths. ACE is a zinc dependent dipeptidyl peptidase and plays key role in controlling blood pressure via renin angiotensin system (RAS), and hence serves as the promising target for antihypertension drugs. Many food derived antihypertensive peptides have been identified recently. However, their ACE inhibitory activity, interactions and stability are not fully evaluated. Our work focused on combination of modern bioinformatics techniques for efficient evaluation of potent ACE inhibitory food peptides and understanding of interactions between ACE and inhibitory peptides. We reported novel antihypertensive peptide IQDVPS, LQPGS, VIP from date, salmon and soybean proteins respectively. Food proteins were digested in-silico to release peptides. Molecular docking studies revealed high binding affinities and interactions with ACE active site. MD simulations and Alanine Scanning were carried out to study the stability of these ACE-peptide complexes in cell like environment. The results showed that the suggested peptides competitively inhibit ACE by tightly binding to its active site, meanwhile maintaining the structural stability of the complex. ACE-LQPGS (Salmon) was found to have best binding with least structural fluctuations.