HOMOLOGY MODEL FOR TRIBOLIUM CASTANEUM SMOOTHENED RECEPTOR AS POTENTIAL TARGET FOR PESTICIDES

G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs) family represent essential targets for drug discovery, but until recently they have not been explored as targets of interest for agrochemical industry. From this family, the smoothened (SMO) receptor has been highlighted as a potential target for the development of novel pesticides. Hitherto, there is not an available X-ray structure of the Tribolium castaneum species for SMO. Thus, in order to highlight common and distinctive features of the human versus Tribolium castaneum SMO receptors, a good homology model for the aforementioned receptor was built using as templates the X-ray structures of human SMO receptors (PDB ID: 4jkv and 4qin). The SiteMap software of Schrodinger suite has been used to identify possible binding sites in the homology model. Five potential binding sites have been discovered. The best scored binding site overlaps perfectly with the binding site of the experimental human SMO proteins.