PRELIMINARY STUDIES OF INTERACTION BETWEEN NANOTUBES AND TOLL-LIKE RECEPTORS

Abstract

Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are a group of proteins which play a crucial role in the innate immune system. The main function of TLRs is to recognize structurally conserved molecules, which are inserted to the organism of the host by microbes, and then to activate the immune response. Current development of drugs is often connected not only with the drug itself, but also with the way it is delivered into the human body to interact directly with the source of the problem. Carbon nanostructures, particularly nanotubes, are one of the carrier molecules of the future. However, there is still no knowledge about the exact mechanisms of toxicity and possible interactions with macromolecules, such as proteins. In our study we tried to determine, if the nanotubes could interfere with the innate immune system by interacting with TLRs. For this purpose, we used the following TLR structures downloaded from the RCSB Protein Data Bank: TLR2 (3A7C), TLR4/MD (3FXI), TLR5 (3V47), TLR3 (2A0Z), and the complexes of TLR1/TLR2 (2Z7X) and TLR2/TLR6 (3A79). The preliminary results of our Steered Molecular Dynamics (SMD) simulations have shown that nanotubes interact very strongly with the binding pockets of some receptors (e.g. TLR2), which results in their binding to these sites without substantial use of the external force.