Anti-apoptotic activity of anthocyanins has potential to inhibit caspase-3 signaling

Caspase-3 is a biochemical marker for cell apoptosis. Several studies fo-cused on exploring caspase inhibitor potential in natural compounds. Hence, in this study, we investigated the anthocyanins as anti-apoptotic potential activity through caspase-3 using molecular docking. Six types of anthocyanin were retrieved from PubChem database and caspase-3 protein was downloaded from Protein Data Bank. Anthocyanins and caspase-3 protein were docked using HEX 8.0 program and visualized using Dis-covery Studio 4.1 software. The interaction among cyanidin-3-O-gluco-side, delphinidin-3-O-glucoside, pelargonidin-3-O-glucoside, peonidin-3-O-glucoside and petunidin-3-O-glucoside showed similar binding pattern on caspase-3 protein. All of them bind to BIR2 region and allosteric site of caspase-3, which are a crucial site for apoptosis regulation. Inter-estingly, cyanidin-3-O-glucoside, delphinidin-3-O-glucoside, pelargo-nidin-3-O-glucoside and peonidin-3-O-glucoside are tightly bind to BIR2 region and allosteric sites with hydrogen bond and hydrophobic interac-tion. Even though malvidin-3-O-glucoside also interacted with caspase-3 in BIR1, BIR2 and BIR3 regions. This study implies that cyanidin-3-O-glucoside, delphinidin-3-O-glucoside, pelargonidin-3-O-glucoside and peonidin-3-O-glucoside are more potent as anti-apoptosis through binding to caspase-3 than other anthocyanins. Although all anthocyanins have potential as an inhibitor of caspase-3 protein and might have potential as anti-apoptosis. Further in-vitro and in-vivo studies are needed to confirm this experiment.