Estudo químico das folhas de Piper fuligineum e P. macedoi por espectrometria de massas combinadas às redes moleculares e avaliação in silico da inibição da Mpro de SARS-CoV-2

Abstract

With the struggle to find a proper treatment for the Covid-19 disease, the study of natural products becomes an interesting way to find potential active compounds for treating this disease. Piper fuligineum and Piper macedoi are plants belonging to the Piperaceae family and native to the Cerrado. The molecular study of the genetic material of both species shows a high degree of similarity between them. To extensively evaluate the compounds present in these species three extraction methods were applied: maceration, hydrodistillation, and supercritical CO2 extraction. These molecules were identified by mass spectrometry resulting in 106 annotations. They were also compared with the use of molecular networking tools of the GNPS platform. 204 nodes were observed in the samples of essential oils, of which 45 are exclusive to P. fuligineum, 38 exclusives to P. macedoi and 121 shared between both species, molecular classes exclusive to each species were also found, giving a possible way to identify them by their essential oil composition. The same tendency was observed on the molecular networks created from the ethanolic and hexanoic extracts, in which of 2100 observed nodes, 914 are exclusive to P. fuligineum 182 exclusives to P. macedoi, and 1004 are shared between both. This tendency shows that despite having 97% of genetic similarity and having been collected in the same region, each species can produce different special metabolites to answer the same environmental threats. Finally, the inhibitory potential by docking molecular of Mpro protease of the SARS-CoV-2 virus of some identified compounds in the species was tested. The metabolites Jangomolide, Benzopyran derivative II and Picrasidine M had the best results in the molecular docking, presenting free energy of -10,36; -9,97, and -9,74 kcal mol-1, respectively.