Effectiveness of Bioactive Compound as Antibacterial and Anti-Quorum Sensing Agent from : An In Silico Study.

Background: antibiotic resistance encourages the development of new therapies, or the discovery of novel antibacterial agents. Previous research revealed that (Sarang Semut) contain potential antibacterial agents. However, specific proteins inhibited by them have not yet been identified as either proteins targeted by antibiotics or proteins that have a role in the quorum-sensing system. This study aims to investigate and predict the action mode of antibacterial compounds with specific proteins by following the molecular docking approach.

Methods: butein (), biflavonoid (), 3″-methoxyepicatechin-3--epicatechin (), 2-dodecyl-4-hydroxylbenzaldehyde (), 2-dodecyl-4-hydroxylbenzaldehyde (), pomolic acid (), betulin (), and sitosterol-(6'--tridecanoil)-3---D-glucopyranoside () from act as the ligand. Antibiotics or substrates in each protein were used as a positive control. To screen the bioactivity of compounds, ligands were analyzed by Prediction of Activity Spectra for Substances (PASS) program. They were docked with 12 proteins by AutoDock Vina in the PyRx 0.8 software application. Those proteins are penicillin-binding protein (PBP), MurB, Sortase A (SrtA), deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) gyrase, ribonucleic acid (RNA) polymerase, ribosomal protein, Cytolysin M (ClyM), FsrB, gelatinase binding-activating pheromone (GBAP), and PgrX retrieved from UniProt. The docking results were analyzed by the ProteinsPlus and Discovery Studio software applications.

Results: most compounds have Pa value over 0.5 against proteins in the cell wall. In nearly all proteins, biflavonoid () has the strongest binding affinity. However, compound binds only three residues, so that is the non-competitive inhibitor.

Conclusion: compound can be a lead compound for an antibacterial agent in each pathway.