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Mpropred: A machine learning (ML) driven Web-App for bioactivity prediction of SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) antagonists

  • Nadim Ferdous
  • , Mahjerin Nasrin Reza
  • , Mohammad Uzzal Hossain
  • , Shahin Mahmud
  • , Suhami Napis
  • , Kamal Chowdhury
  • , A. K.M. Mohiuddin
  • Mawlana Bhashani Science and Technology University
  • Universiti Putra Malaysia
  • Claflin University

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

11 Scopus citations

Abstract

The severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic emerged in 2019 and still requiring treatments with fast clinical translatability. Frequent occurrence of mutations in spike glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 led the consideration of an alternative therapeutic target to combat the ongoing pandemic. The main protease (Mpro) is such an attractive drug target due to its importance in maturating several polyproteins during the replication process. In the present study, we used a classification structure–activity relationship (CSAR) model to find substructures that leads to to anti-Mpro activities among 758 non-redundant compounds. A set of 12 fingerprints were used to describe Mpro inhibitors, and the random forest approach was used to build prediction models from 100 distinct data splits. The data set’s modelability (MODI index) was found to be robust, with a value of 0.79 above the 0.65 threshold. The accuracy (89%), sensitivity (89%), specificity (73%), and Matthews correlation coefficient (79%) used to calculate the prediction performance, was also found to be statistically robust. An extensive analysis of the top significant descriptors unveiled the significance of methyl side chains, aromatic ring and halogen groups for Mpro inhibition. Finally, the predictive model is made publicly accessible as a web-app named Mpropred in order to allow users to predict the bioactivity of compounds against SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. Later, CMNPD, a marine compound database was screened by our app to predict bioactivity of all the compounds and results revealed significant correlation with their binding affinity to Mpro. Molecular dynamics (MD) simulation and molecular mechanics/Poisson Boltzmann surface area (MM/PBSA) analysis showed improved properties of the complexes. Thus, the knowledge and web-app shown herein can be used to develop more effective and specific inhibitors against the SARS-CoV-2 Mpro. The web-app can be accessed from https://share.streamlit.io/nadimfrds/mpropred/Mpropred_app.py.

Original languageEnglish
Article numbere0287179
JournalPLoS ONE
Volume18
Issue number6 June
DOIs
StatePublished - Jun 2023

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