In 2030, around 900 million people in the world could suffer from mental health
disorders. Anxiety is the 2nd most common mental disorder, caused by stress and the
fast-paced lifestyle. It is accompanied by characteristic symptoms such as
suffocation, rapid heartbeat, tremor, nervous restlessness and sleep disturbances.
Recently, there has been a growing interest in people alleviating milder forms of
mental disorders with natural remedies. The purpose of this paper was to predict
protein targets in human for selected bioactive compound with anxiolytic effect from
the food with the use of bioinformational tools. Based on the scientific literature
review, we selected the flavonoid chrysin, which is found mainly in honey,
mushrooms and medicinal plants. With inverse docking, we predicted 25,329 protein
targets with the ProBiS-Dock algorithm tool. Among the first 100 with the least free
binding energy, we identified 73 new potential targets. With a secondary literature
review, we validated the method of this work and described the first 20 targets and
their physiological role. We focused on the two targets (PDE4B and KRAS) that have
known association with anxiety and demonstrated their interactions with chrysin in
the program PyMOL. Due to the strong link between PDE4B gene with anxiety, we
hypothesized that PDE4B protein target (phosphodiesterase 4B), could represent an
important discovery in the use of chrysin. Functional foods with bioactive
compounds such as chrysin could play an important role in relieving anxiety in a
natural way.
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