Computational screening of pathogenic missense nsSNPs in heme oxygenase 1 (HMOX1) gene and their structural and functional consequences

Abstract

Heme Oxygenase 1 (HMOX1) is a cytoprotective enzyme, exhibiting the highest activity in the spleen, catalyzing the heme ring breakdown into products of biological significance- biliverdin, CO, and Fe²⁺. In vascular cells, HMOX1 possesses strong anti-apoptotic, antioxidant, anti-proliferative, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory actions. The majority of these activities are crucial for the prevention of atherogenesis. Single amino acid substitutions in proteins generated by missense non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphism (nsSNPs) in the protein-encoding regions of genes are potent enough to cause significant medical challenges due to the alteration of protein structure and function. The current study aimed at characterizing and analyzing high-risk nsSNPs associated with the human HMOX1 gene. Preliminary screening of the total available 288 missense SNPs was performed through the lens of deleteriousness and stability prediction tools. Finally, a total of seven nsSNPs (Y58D, A131T, Y134H, F166S, F167S, R183S and M186V) were found to be most deleterious by all tools that are present at highly conserved positions. Molecular dynamics simulations (MDS) analysis explained the mutational effects on the dynamic action of the wild-type and mutant proteins. In a nutshell, R183S (rs749644285) was identified as a highly detrimental mutation that could significantly render the enzymatic activity of HMOX1. The finding of this computational analysis might help subject the experimental confirmatory analysis to characterize the role of nsSNPs in HMOX1.

Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Keywords:

• In-silico analysis
• HMOX1
• missense mutations
• non-synonymous SNPs
• molecular dynamics simulations

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the Management, M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology, and the Jaypee University of Information Technology for providing the computational facilities necessary to perform the research studies. This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.