Bioinformatics exploration of olive oil: molecular targets and properties of major bioactive constituents

Abstract

Olive oil possesses medicinal properties which include antimicrobial, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetes, and anti-cardiovascular diseases. Oleic acid is the most abundant (95%) constituent of olive oil and others include linoleic acid, oleuropein, oleanolic acid, maslinic acid, melatonin, and others. The objective of this study is to predict the molecular targets and properties of key bioactive components of olive oil in human. Bioinformatics methods, which involved pharmacokinetics prediction, target prediction and gene network analyses, were used. The results showed that oleic acid has similar targets with linoleic acid, and showed significant probability of binding to several targets such as fatty acid-binding proteins in the adipose, epidermal, liver and muscle as well as alpha, delta and gamma peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors (PPARs). Carbonic anhydrase showed to be the only significant target of tyrosol, while protein-tyrosine phosphatase 1B, and CD81 antigen were targeted by maslinic acid and oleanolic acid. This study has applauded oleic acid, linoleic acid and tyrosol as olive oil bioactive constituents that have several potential pharmacological effects in humans that modulate several enzymes, receptors and transcription factors. The future work will be to investigate the effects of oleic acid on fatty acid-binding proteins and telomerase reverse transcriptase; melatonin on quinone reductase 2; tyrosol on carbonic anhydrase II; maslinic acid and oleanolic acid on protein-tyrosine phosphatase 1B.