Changes in human environment and lifestyle over the last century have caused a dramatic increase in the occurrence of diabetes. Research of past decades illustrated that vitamin D and E have a key role in the improvement of diabetes by reducing oxidative stress, protein glycosylation, insulin resistance and also improving beta cell function. Binding properties and conformational changes of human insulin upon interaction with vitamins D3 and E (α-tocopherol) were investigated by spectroscopy, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) and molecular dynamic simulation. Tyrosine fluorescence quenching studies indicates changes in the human insulin conformation in the presence of vitamins. Binding constants of vitamins D3 and E for human insulin were determined to be 2.7 and 1.5 (×10-5M-1) and the corresponding average numbers of binding sites were determined to be 1.3 and 1.2, respectively. Far- and near-UV circular dichroism studies showed that vitamin E can significantly change the secondary and tertiary structures of human insulin via an increase in the content of α-helix structure. Results of DSC showed that both vitamins D3 and E stabilize the structure of human insulin. Molecular dynamic simulation results indicated that vitamin D3 decreases the helical and strand structural contents of human insulin, but vitamin E stabilizes more regular secondary structures such as helical and strand structural contents as shown by experimental results.
Keywords: Circular dichroism; Differential scanning calorimetry; Human insulin; Molecular dynamic simulation; Vitamin D(3); Vitamin E.
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