Explaining SARS-CoV-2 3CL Mpro binding to peptidyl Michael acceptor and a ketone-based inhibitors using Molecular fractionation with conjugate caps method

Abstract

The main protease SARS-CoV-2 3CL Mpro (3CL-Mpro) is an attractive target for developing antiviral inhibitors due to its essential role in processing the polyproteins translated from viral coronavirus RNA. In this work, it was obtained non-covalent complexes of this protease with two distinct ligands, a peptidyl Michael acceptor (N3) and a ketone-based compound (V2M). The complexes were modeled from processed crystallographic data (PDB id: 6LU7 and 6XHM respectively) using combined quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics (QM/MM) calculations. The QM region was treated at the PBE-def2-SV(P) level, while the Amber-ff19SB force field was used to describe the MM region. The obtained models were used to perform calculations for describing the protease/ligand binding, based in the framework of the Density Functional Theory (DFT) and within the Molecular Fractionation with Conjugated Caps (MFCC) scheme. Our results have shown values for the total interaction energies of -111.84 and -111.64 kcal mol-1 having as ligands a N3 and V2M, respectively. Most importantly, it was possible to assess the relative individual amino acid energy contribution for the binding of both ligands considering residues around them up to 10 Å of radial distance. Residues Gln189, Met165, Glu166, His164, and Asn142 were identified as main interacting amino acid residues for both complexes, being their negative interaction energy contributions higher than -5.0 kcal mol-1. In the case of 3CL-Mpro/ V2M complex, we should add His41, Ser144, and Cys145 as main contributing residues. Our data also have shown that interactions of type π-amide, π-alkyl and alkyl-alkyl and carbon hydrogen bonds should be also considered in order to explain the binding of 3CL-Mpro with the selected inhibitors. Our results also determined that the carbonyl-L-leucinamide scaffold of both inhibitors is its main determinant of binding with a contribution to the energy of interaction of 54.51 and 50.69 kcal mol-1 for N3 and V2M, respectively.