Question

What functional groups are in a receptor? Does the benzene ring in a drug or adrenaline form a hydrophobic interaction in a receptor?

Answer 1

What functional groups are in a receptor? Does the benzene ring in a drug or adrenaline form a hydrophobic interaction in a receptor

1)Any drug that enter the human body tend to stimulate certain receptors, ion channels, acts on enzymes and/or transporter proteins.

2)Once the receptor get activated they trigger a particular response directly on the body. Or they may trigger release of hormones like adrenaline and/or endogenous drug in the body to stimulate a particular response.

3)Drug interact with receptors by bonding at specific sites. Mostly proteins acts as receptors where the actually interacting molecules are amino acids.

4)These amino acids have several kinds of functionalities which may be hydrophilic like –COOH, -NH2-, -OH showing manly Hydrogen bonding kind of interactions or hydrophobic like –Ph, -CH3, aliphatic chains etc.

5) Some interactions are ionic e.g. interaction between –NH3⁺ , -COO^-, hence these kinds of functionalities in ionized state may also present in receptors.

6) Mostly proteins are receptors and they are made up of amino acids. These constituent amino acids are in turn consist of hydrophobic and/or hydrophilic functionalities. Hence we can say that receptors also has some hydrophobic functional groups like –Ph, -CH3 etc. Benzene ring is a hydrophobic group and it will certainly form hydrophobic interaction at receptor sites if it has no other functionality on. These interaction will be useful as they may orient other functionality in such a way that they could show hydrophilic interaction so that drug can act effectively.

7)We can see the structure of adrenaline which has 2 –OH groups on its benzene ring part. Such a benzene ring is no more hydrophobic and will not show hydrophobic interaction rather it can show strong H-bonding interaction at receptor.

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