In vitro screening for inhibitor of cloned Drosophila melanogaster tyramine-β-hydroxylase and docking studies.

Biogenic amines are common biologically active substances extended within the whole animal kingdom where they play vital roles as signal transducer as well as regulator of cell functions. One of these biogenic amines called octopamine (OA) is synthesized from tyramine (TA) by the catalysis of tyramine-β-hydroxylase (TβH) originated in the insect nervous system. Both TA and OA act as neurotransmitters, neurohormones and neuromodulators in the arthropod nervous system. Herein, the inhibitory activity of 1-arylimidazole-2(3H)-thiones (AITs) was tested on cloned Drosophila tyramine-β-hydroxylase (DmTβH) expressed in Bombyx mori strain. Radiolabelled (3)H-TA was used to analyze the activity of AITs exhibited inhibitory effects on DmTβH, whose ID50 values range from 0.02 to 2511nM where DmTβH was inhibited in a dose-dependent manner at pH 7.6 and 25°C during a 30min of incubation. To understand the catalytic role of the TβH, a three dimensional structure of the TβH from Drosophila melanogaster was constructed by homology modeling using the Phyre2 web server with 100% confidence. The modeled three-dimensional structure of TβH was used to perform the docking study with AITs. This may give more insights to precise design of inhibitors for TβH to control insect's population.