A docking study of insulin with LI-CR-L2 ecto domain of insulin receptor: an easy way for preliminary screening of novel anti-diabetic peptides

Although interaction of human insulin with its receptor is studied to considerable extent such studies are currently lacking with recombinant insulin in-spite of its rampant clinical use. It is known that at molecular level the interaction of recombinant insulin with insulin receptor is similar to human insulin but not exactly same. With the increasing incidence of diabetes throughout the globe use of recombinant insulin is also increasing at a considerable rate. Therefore it is need of the hour to explore the recombinant insulin- insulin receptor interaction by all possible means. In this paper we have studied insulin receptor binding of lispro and glargine; the two commonly used recombinant insulins using tools of computational biology. We have observed that the binding pattern of insulin receptor (L1-CR-L2 ectodomain) with lispro and glargine is different when compared with human insulin. Analyzing the ligand receptor interactions we have hypothesized that the tail region of insulin beyond B26 is a critical regulator of insulin insulin receptor interactions detail of which cannot be understandable from docking studies due to lack of consideration of the flexibility of the tail region while docking studies. We have recommended experimental validation of our study. However, our docking procedure may also be explored for preliminary screening of novel anti-diabetic peptide.