Structural investigation of human dectin-1 receptor; A novel gateway in drug discovery

Abstract

Stimulation of C-type lectin domain of human dectin-1 receptor by fungal β-glucans causes conformational changes in its cytoplasmic domain which initiates various cellular responses mediated by downstream signaling components. We aimed to build the three-dimensional structures of thecytoplasmic domain as well asC-type lectin domain of human Dectin-1along with their potential ligands through homology modeling.The overall three-dimensional fold of cytoplasmic domain was found to consist of mixed β-sheet whereas,in case of C-type lectin domain antiparallel βsheets flanked byα-helices were observed. Protein-protein docking strategy was utilized to monitorkey interactions between cytoplasmic domainof dectin-1 receptor and PKCδ, as a prime regulator of Dectin-1 signaling. The interface was observed to have both hydrophilic and hydrophobic amino acid residues maintaining crucial contacts between the two proteins. The given three dimensional structural information can be implicated in structure-based drug designing to discover potential immunomodulators that can interfere with the immune responses and phagocytosis during inflammatory and infectious conditions.