Related Articles

Based on a statistical mechanics-based iterative method, we have extracted a set of distance-dependent, all-atom pairwise potentials for protein-ligand interactions from the crystal structures of 1300 protein-ligand complexes. The iterative method circumvents the long-standing reference state problem in knowledge-based scoring functions. The resulted scoring function, referred to as ITScore 2.0, has been tested with the CSAR (Community Structure-Activity Resource, 2009 release) benchmark of 345 diverse protein-ligand complexes. ITScore 2.0 achieved a Pearson correlation of R2 = 0.54 in binding affinity prediction. A comparative analysis has been done on the scoring performances of ITScore 2.0, the van der Waals (VDW) scoring function, the VDW with heavy atoms only, and the force field (FF) scoring function of DOCK which consists of a VDW term and an electrostatic term. The results reveal several important factors that affect the scoring performances, which could be helpful for the improvement of scoring functions.

The performance of several two-step scoring approaches for molecular docking were assessed for their ability to predict binding geometries and free energies. Two new scoring functions designed for “step 2 discrimination” were proposed and compared to our CHARMM implementation of the linear interaction energy (LIE) approach using the Generalized-Born with Molecular Volume (GBMV) implicit solvation model. A scoring function S1 was proposed by considering only “interacting” ligand atoms as the “effective size” of the ligand, and extended to an empirical regression-based pair potential S2. The S1 and S2 scoring schemes were trained and five-fold cross validated on a diverse set of 259 protein-ligand complexes from the Ligand Protein Database (LPDB). The regression-based parameters for S1 and S2 also demonstrated reasonable transferability in the CSARdock 2010 benchmark using a new dataset (NRC HiQ) of diverse protein-ligand complexes. The ability of the scoring functions to accurately predict ligand geometry was evaluated by calculating the discriminative power (DP) of the scoring functions to identify native poses. The parameters for the LIE scoring function with the optimal discriminative power (DP) for geometry (step 1 discrimination) were found to be very similar to the best-fit parameters for binding free energy over a large number of protein-ligand complexes (step 2 discrimination). Reasonable performance of the scoring functions in enrichment of active compounds in four different protein target classes established that the parameters for S1 and S2 provided reasonable accuracy and transferability. Additional analysis was performed to definitively separate scoring function performance from molecular weight effects. This analysis included the prediction of ligand binding efficiencies for a subset of the CSARdock NRC HiQ dataset where the number of ligand heavy atoms ranged from 17 to 35. This range of ligand heavy atoms is where improved accuracy of predicted ligand efficiencies is most relevant to real-world drug design efforts.

Virtual screening is becoming an important tool for drug discovery. However, the application of virtual screening has been limited by the lack of accurate scoring functions. Here, we present a novel scoring function, MedusaScore, for evaluating protein-ligand binding. MedusaScore is based on models of physical interactions that include van der Waals, solvation and hydrogen bonding energies. To ensure the best transferability of the scoring function, we do not use any protein-ligand experimental data for parameter training. We then test the MedusaScore for docking decoy recognition and binding affinity prediction and find superior performance compared to other widely used scoring functions. Statistical analysis indicates that one source of inaccuracy of MedusaScore may arise from the unaccounted entropic loss upon ligand binding, which suggests avenues of approach for further MedusaScore improvement.

The efficient and accurate quantification of protein-ligand interactions using computational methods is still a challenging task. Two factors strongly contribute to the failure of docking methods to predict free energies of binding accurately: the insufficient incorporation of protein flexibility coupled to ligand binding and the neglected dynamics of the protein-ligand complex in current scoring schemes. We have developed a new methodology, named the ‘ligand-model’ concept, to sample protein conformations that are relevant for binding structurally diverse sets of ligands. In the ligand-model concept, molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations are performed with a virtual ligand, represented by a collection of functional groups that binds to the protein and dynamically changes its shape and properties during the simulation. The ligand model essentially represents a large ensemble of different chemical species binding to the same target protein. Representative protein structures were obtained from the MD simulation, and docking was performed into this ensemble of protein conformation. Similar binding poses were clustered, and the averaged score was utilized to re-rank the poses. We demonstrate that the ligand-model approach yields significant improvements in predicting native-like binding poses and quantifying binding affinities compared to static docking and ensemble docking simulations into protein structures generated from an apo MD simulation.

Background

A good scoring function is essential for molecular docking computations. In conventional scoring functions, energy terms modeling pairwise interactions are cumulatively summed, and the best docking solution is selected. Here, we propose to transform protein-ligand interactions into three-dimensional geometric networks, from which recurring network substructures, or network motifs, are selected and used to provide probability-ranked interaction templates with which to score docking solutions.

Results

A novel scoring function for protein-ligand docking, MotifScore, was developed. It is non-energy-based, and docking is, instead, scored by counting the occurrences of motifs of protein-ligand interaction networks constructed using structures of protein-ligand complexes. MotifScore has been tested on a benchmark set established by others to assess its ability to identify near-native complex conformations among a set of decoys. In this benchmark test, 84% of the highest-scored docking conformations had root-mean-square deviations (rmsds) below 2.0 Å from the native conformation, which is comparable with the best of several energy-based docking scoring functions. Many of the top motifs, which comprise a multitude of chemical groups that interact simultaneously and make a highly significant contribution to MotifScore, capture recurrent interacting patterns beyond pairwise interactions.

Conclusions

While providing quite good docking scores, MotifScore is quite different from conventional energy-based functions. MotifScore thus represents a new, network-based approach for exploring problems associated with molecular docking.

Background

Scoring functions, such as molecular mechanic forcefields and statistical potentials are fundamentally important tools in protein structure modeling and quality assessment.

Results

The performances of a number of publicly available scoring functions are compared with a statistical rigor, with an emphasis on knowledge-based potentials. We explored the effect on accuracy of alternative choices for representing interaction center types and other features of scoring functions, such as using information on solvent accessibility, on torsion angles, accounting for secondary structure preferences and side chain orientation. Partially based on the observations made, we present a novel residue based statistical potential, which employs a shuffled reference state definition and takes into account the mutual orientation of residue side chains. Atom- and residue-level statistical potentials and Linux executables to calculate the energy of a given protein proposed in this work can be downloaded from http://www.fiserlab.org/potentials.

Conclusions

Among the most influential terms we observed a critical role of a proper reference state definition and the benefits of including information about the microenvironment of interaction centers. Molecular mechanical potentials were also tested and found to be over-sensitive to small local imperfections in a structure, requiring unfeasible long energy relaxation before energy scores started to correlate with model quality.

How to make an accurate representation of protein-DNA interactions by an energy function is a long-standing unsolved problem in structural biology. Here, we modified a statistical potential based on the distance-scaled, finite ideal-gas reference state (DFIRE) so that it is optimized for protein-DNA interactions. The changes include a volume-fraction correction to account for unmixable atom types in proteins and DNA in addition to the usage of a low-count correction, residue/base-specific atom types, and a shorter cutoff distance for protein-DNA interactions. The new statistical energy functions are tested in threading and docking decoy discriminations and prediction of protein-DNA binding affinities and transcription-factor binding profiles. Results indicate that new proposed energy functions are among the best in existing energy functions for protein-DNA interactions. The new energy functions are available as a web-server called DDNA 2.0 at http://sparks.informatics.iupui.edu. The server version was trained by the entire 212 protein-DNA complexes.

Applications in structural biology and medicinal chemistry require protein-ligand scoring functions for two distinct tasks: (i) ranking different poses of a small molecule in a protein binding site; and (ii) ranking different small molecules by their complementarity to a protein site. Using probability theory, we developed two atomic distance-dependent statistical scoring functions: PoseScore was optimized for recognizing native binding geometries of ligands from other poses and RankScore was optimized for distinguishing ligands from nonbinding molecules. Both scores are based on a set of 8,885 crystallographic structures of protein-ligand complexes, but differ in the values of three key parameters. Factors influencing the accuracy of scoring were investigated, including the maximal atomic distance and non-native ligand geometries used for scoring, as well as the use of protein models instead of crystallographic structures for training and testing the scoring function. For the test set of 19 targets, RankScore improved the ligand enrichment (logAUC) and early enrichment (EF1) scores computed by DOCK 3.6 for 13 and 14 targets, respectively. In addition, RankScore performed better at rescoring than each of seven other scoring functions tested. Accepting both the crystal structure and decoy geometries with all-atom root-mean-square errors of up to 2 Å from the crystal structure as correct binding poses, PoseScore gave the best score to a correct binding pose among 100 decoys for 88% of all cases in a benchmark set containing 100 protein-ligand complexes. PoseScore accuracy is comparable to that of DrugScoreCSD and ITScore/SE, and superior to 12 other tested scoring functions. Therefore, RankScore can facilitate ligand discovery, by ranking complexes of the target with different small molecules; PoseScore can be used for protein-ligand complex structure prediction, by ranking different conformations of a given protein-ligand pair. The statistical potentials are available through the Integrative Modeling Platform (IMP) software package (http://salilab.org/imp/) and the LigScore web server (http://salilab.org/ligscore/).

We introduce a statistical method for evaluating atomic level 3D interaction patterns of protein-ligand contacts. Such patterns can be used for fast separation of likely ligand and ligand binding site combinations out of all those that are geometrically possible. The practical purpose of this probabilistic method is for molecular docking and scoring, as an essential part of a scoring function. Probabilities of interaction patterns are calculated conditional on structural x-ray data and predefined chemical classification of molecular fragment types. Spatial coordinates of atoms are modeled using a Bayesian statistical framework with parametric 3D probability densities. The parameters are given distributions a priori, which provides the possibility to update the densities of model parameters with new structural data and use the parameter estimates to create a contact hierarchy. The contact preferences can be defined for any spatial area around a specified type of fragment. We compared calculated contact point hierarchies with the number of contact atoms found near the contact point in a reference set of x-ray data, and found that these were in general in a close agreement. Additionally, using substrate binding site in cathechol-O-methyltransferase and 27 small potential binder molecules, it was demonstrated that these probabilities together with auxiliary parameters separate well ligands from decoys (true positive rate 0.75, false positive rate 0). A particularly useful feature of the proposed Bayesian framework is that it also characterizes predictive uncertainty in terms of probabilities, which have an intuitive interpretation from the applied perspective.

Background

Computational approaches to protein-protein docking typically include scoring aimed at improving the rank of the near-native structure relative to the false-positive matches. Knowledge-based potentials improve modeling of protein complexes by taking advantage of the rapidly increasing amount of experimentally derived information on protein-protein association. An essential element of knowledge-based potentials is defining the reference state for an optimal description of the residue-residue (or atom-atom) pairs in the non-interaction state.

Results

The study presents a new Distance- and Environment-dependent, Coarse-grained, Knowledge-based (DECK) potential for scoring of protein-protein docking predictions. Training sets of protein-protein matches were generated based on bound and unbound forms of proteins taken from the DOCKGROUND resource. Each residue was represented by a pseudo-atom in the geometric center of the side chain. To capture the long-range and the multi-body interactions, residues in different secondary structure elements at protein-protein interfaces were considered as different residue types. Five reference states for the potentials were defined and tested. The optimal reference state was selected and the cutoff effect on the distance-dependent potentials investigated. The potentials were validated on the docking decoys sets, showing better performance than the existing potentials used in scoring of protein-protein docking results.

Conclusions

A novel residue-based statistical potential for protein-protein docking was developed and validated on docking decoy sets. The results show that the scoring function DECK can successfully identify near-native protein-protein matches and thus is useful in protein docking. In addition to the practical application of the potentials, the study provides insights into the relative utility of the reference states, the scope of the distance dependence, and the coarse-graining of the potentials.

Background

An accurate potential function is essential to attack protein folding and structure prediction problems. The key to developing efficient knowledge-based potential functions is to design reference states that can appropriately counteract generic interactions. The reference states of many knowledge-based distance-dependent atomic potential functions were derived from non-interacting particles such as ideal gas, however, which ignored the inherent sequence connectivity and entropic elasticity of proteins.

Methodology

We developed a new pair-wise distance-dependent, atomic statistical potential function (RW), using an ideal random-walk chain as reference state, which was optimized on CASP models and then benchmarked on nine structural decoy sets. Second, we incorporated a new side-chain orientation-dependent energy term into RW (RWplus) and found that the side-chain packing orientation specificity can further improve the decoy recognition ability of the statistical potential.

Significance

RW and RWplus demonstrate a significantly better ability than the best performing pair-wise distance-dependent atomic potential functions in both native and near-native model selections. It has higher energy-RMSD and energy-TM-score correlations compared with other potentials of the same type in real-life structure assembly decoys. When benchmarked with a comprehensive list of publicly available potentials, RW and RWplus shows comparable performance to the state-of-the-art scoring functions, including those combining terms from multiple resources. These data demonstrate the usefulness of random-walk chain as reference states which correctly account for sequence connectivity and entropic elasticity of proteins. It shows potential usefulness in structure recognition and protein folding simulations. The RW and RWplus potentials, as well as the newly generated I-TASSER decoys, are freely available in http://zhanglab.ccmb.med.umich.edu/RW.

A recent rational approach to anti-malarial drug design is characterized as “covalent biotherapy” involves linking of two molecules with individual intrinsic activity into a single agent, thus packaging dual activity into a single hybrid molecule. In view of this background and reported anti malaria synergism between artemisinin and quinine; we describe the computer-assisted docking to predict molecular interaction and binding affinity of Artemisinin-Quinine hybrid and its derivatives with the intraparasitic haeme group of human haemoglobin. Starting from a crystallographic structure of Fe-protoporphyrin-IX, binding modes, orientation of peroxide bridge (Fe-O distance), docking score and interaction energy are predicted using the docking molecular mechanics based on generalized Born/surface area (MM-GBSA) solvation model. Seven new ligands were identified with a favourable glide score (XP score) and binding free energy (ΔG) with reference to the experimental structure from a data set of thirty four hybrid derivatives. The result shows the conformational property of the drug-receptor interaction and may lead to rational design and synthesis of improved potent artemisinin based hybrid antimalarial that target haemozoin formation.

Background

Protein-protein interactions are involved in most cellular processes, and their detailed physico-chemical and structural characterization is needed in order to understand their function at the molecular level. In-silico docking tools can complement experimental techniques, providing three-dimensional structural models of such interactions at atomic resolution. In several recent studies, protein structures have been modeled as networks (or graphs), where the nodes represent residues and the connecting edges their interactions. From such networks, it is possible to calculate different topology-based values for each of the nodes, and to identify protein regions with high centrality scores, which are known to positively correlate with key functional residues, hot spots, and protein-protein interfaces.

Results

Here we show that this correlation can be efficiently used for the scoring of rigid-body docking poses. When integrated into the pyDock energy-based docking method, the new combined scoring function significantly improved the results of the individual components as shown on a standard docking benchmark. This improvement was particularly remarkable for specific protein complexes, depending on the shape, size, type, or flexibility of the proteins involved.

Conclusions

The network-based representation of protein structures can be used to identify protein-protein binding regions and to efficiently score docking poses, complementing energy-based approaches.

Protein-ligand docking programs can generate a large number of possible binding orientations for each ligand candidate. The challenge is to identify the orientations closest to the native binding mode using a scoring method. Many different scoring functions have been developed for protein-ligand scoring, but their performance on binding mode prediction is often target-dependent. In this study, a statistical approach was employed to provide a confidence measure of scoring performance in finding close to the correct docked ligand orientations. It exploits the fact that the scores provided by an adequately performing scoring function generally improve as the ligand binding modes get closer to the correct native orientation. For such cases, the correlation coefficient of scores vs. distances is expected to be highest when the most native-like orientation is used as a reference. This correlation coefficient, called the correlation-based score (CBScore), was used as an indicator of how far the docked pose was from the native orientation. The correlation between the original scores and CBScores as well as the range of CBScores were found to be good measures of scoring performance. They were combined into a single quantity, called the scoring confidence index. High values of the scoring confidence index were indicative of pronounced and relatively smooth binding energy landscapes with easily discernable global minima, resulting in reliable binding mode prediction. Low values of this index reflected rugged energy landscapes making the prediction of the correct binding mode very difficult and often unreliable. The diagnostic ability of the scoring confidence index was tested on a non-redundant set of 50 protein-ligand complexes scored with three commonly employed scoring functions: AffiScore, DrugScore and X-Score. Binding mode predictions were found to be three times more reliable for complexes with scoring confidence indices in the upper half than for cases with values in the lower half of the resulting range of 0 to 1.6. This new confidence measure of scoring performance is expected to be a valuable tool for virtual screening applications.

The rapidly growing number of theoretically predicted protein structures requires robust methods that can utilize low-quality receptor structures as targets for ligand docking. Typically, docking accuracy falls off dramatically when apo or modeled receptors are used in docking experiments. Low-resolution ligand docking techniques have been developed to deal with structural inaccuracies in predicted receptor models. In this spirit, we describe the development and optimization of a knowledge-based potential implemented in Q-Dock, a low-resolution flexible ligand docking approach. Self-docking experiments using crystal structures reveals satisfactory accuracy, comparable with all-atom docking. All-atom models reconstructed from Q-Dock’s low-resolution models can be further refined by even a simple all-atom energy minimization. In decoy-docking against distorted receptor models with a root-mean-square deviation, RMSD, from native of ~3 Å, Q-Dock recovers on average 15–20% more specific contacts and 25–35% more binding residues than all-atom methods. To further improve docking accuracy against low-quality protein models, we propose a pocket-specific protein-ligand interaction potential derived from weakly homologous threading holo-templates. The success rate of Q-Dock employing a pocket-specific potential is 6.3 times higher than that previously reported for the Dolores method, another low-resolution docking approach.

Incorporating receptor flexibility into molecular docking should improve results for flexible proteins. However, the incorporation of explicit all-atom flexibility with molecular dynamics for the entire protein chain may also introduce significant error and “noise” that could decrease docking accuracy and deteriorate the ability of a scoring function to rank native-like poses. We address this apparent paradox by comparing the success of several flexible receptor models in cross-docking and multiple receptor ensemble docking for p38α mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase. Explicit all-atom receptor flexibility has been incorporated into a CHARMM-based molecular docking method (CDOCKER) using both molecular dynamics (MD) and torsion angle molecular dynamics (TAMD) for the refinement of predicted protein-ligand binding geometries. These flexible receptor models have been evaluated, and the accuracy and efficiency of TAMD sampling is directly compared to MD sampling. Several flexible receptor models are compared, encompassing flexible side chains, flexible loops, multiple flexible backbone segments, and treatment of the entire chain as flexible. We find that although including side chain and some backbone flexibility is required for improved docking accuracy as expected, docking accuracy also diminishes as additional and unnecessary receptor flexibility is included into the conformational search space. Ensemble docking results demonstrate that including protein flexibility leads to to improved agreement with binding data for 227 active compounds. This comparison also demonstrates that a flexible receptor model enriches high affinity compound identification without significantly increasing the number of false positives from low affinity compounds.

Elucidation of the mechanism of biomacromolecular recognition events has been a topic of intense interest over the past century. The inherent dynamic nature of both protein and ligand molecules along with the continuous reshaping of the energy landscape during the binding process renders it difficult to characterize this process at atomic detail. Here, we investigate the recognition dynamics of ubiquitin via microsecond all-atom molecular dynamics simulation providing both thermodynamic and kinetic information. The high-level of consistency found with respect to experimental NMR data lends support to the accuracy of the in silico representation of the conformational substates and their interconversions of free ubiquitin. Using an energy-based reweighting approach, the statistical distribution of conformational states of ubiquitin is monitored as a function of the distance between ubiquitin and its binding partner Hrs-UIM. It is found that extensive and dense sampling of conformational space afforded by the µs MD trajectory is essential for the elucidation of the binding mechanism as is Boltzmann sampling, overcoming inherent limitations of sparsely sampled empirical ensembles. The results reveal a population redistribution mechanism that takes effect when the ligand is at intermediate range of 1–2 nm from ubiquitin. This mechanism, which may be depicted as a superposition of the conformational selection and induced fit mechanisms, also applies to other binding partners of ubiquitin, such as the GGA3 GAT domain.

Author Summary

Molecular recognition plays a central role in many biological processes, ensuring specific and efficient interaction between binding partners. Various models for describing the mechanisms of molecular recognition have been proposed, but the validation of these models has been traditionally difficult due to the transient and complex nature of the dynamic recognition process. In the present study, we aim at visually characterizing the mutual interplay between human ubiquitin and its ligands via microsecond time scale molecular dynamics simulation, which is validated rigorously against experimental NMR data. Taking advantage of Boltzmann sampling of molecular dynamics snapshots, we statistically reweight the populations of ubiquitin in the presence of its ligand molecule at intermediate distance range (1–2 nm) to examine the population redistribution mechanisms. These results offer new atomistic insights into this vital protein-protein recognition event.

Computational small molecule docking into comparative models of proteins is widely used to query protein function and in the development of small molecule therapeutics. We benchmark RosettaLigand docking into comparative models for nine proteins built during CASP8 that contain ligands. We supplement the study with 21 additional protein/ligand complexes to cover a wider space of chemotypes. During a full docking run in 21 of the 30 cases, RosettaLigand successfully found a native-like binding mode among the top ten scoring binding modes. From the benchmark cases we find that careful template selection based on ligand occupancy provides the best chance of success while overall sequence identity between template and target do not appear to improve results. We also find that binding energy normalized by atom number is often less than −0.4 in native-like binding modes.

The recent crystal structure determinations of druggable class A G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) has opened up excellent opportunities in structure-based ligand discovery for this pharmaceutically important protein family. We have developed and validated a customized structure-based virtual fragment screening method against the recently determined human histamine H1 receptor (H1R) crystal structure. The method combines molecular docking simulations with a protein-ligand interaction fingerprint (IFP) scoring method. The optimized in silico screening approach was successfully applied to identify a chemically diverse set of novel fragment-like (≤ 22 heavy atoms) H1R ligands with an exceptionally high hit rate of 73%. Of the 26 tested fragments, 19 compounds had affinities ranging from 10 μM to 6 nM. The current study shows the potential of in silico screening against GPCR crystal structures to explore novel, fragment-like GPCR ligand space.

Background

Development of a fast and accurate scoring function in virtual screening remains a hot issue in current computer-aided drug research. Different scoring functions focus on diverse aspects of ligand binding, and no single scoring can satisfy the peculiarities of each target system. Therefore, the idea of a consensus score strategy was put forward. Integrating several scoring functions, consensus score re-assesses the docked conformations using a primary scoring function. However, it is not really robust and efficient from the perspective of optimization. Furthermore, to date, the majority of available methods are still based on single objective optimization design.

Results

In this paper, two multi-objective optimization methods, called MOSFOM, were developed for virtual screening, which simultaneously consider both the energy score and the contact score. Results suggest that MOSFOM can effectively enhance enrichment and performance compared with a single score. For three different kinds of binding sites, MOSFOM displays an excellent ability to differentiate active compounds through energy and shape complementarity. EFMOGA performed particularly well in the top 2% of database for all three cases, whereas MOEA_Nrg and MOEA_Cnt performed better than the corresponding individual scoring functions if the appropriate type of binding site was selected.

Conclusion

The multi-objective optimization method was successfully applied in virtual screening with two different scoring functions that can yield reasonable binding poses and can furthermore, be ranked with the potentially compromised conformations of each compound, abandoning those conformations that can not satisfy overall objective functions.

A public web server performing computational titration at the active site in a protein-ligand complex has been implemented. This calculation is based on the Hydropathic INTeraction (HINT) noncovalent force field. From 3D coordinate data for the protein, ligand and bridging waters (if available), the server predicts the best combination of protonation states for each ionizable residue and/or ligand functional group as well as the Gibbs free energy of binding for the ionization-optimized protein-ligand complex. The 3D structure for the modified molecules is available as output. In addition, a graph depicting how this energy changes with acidity, i.e., as a function of added protons, can be obtained. This data may prove to be of use in preparing models for virtual screening and molecular docking. A few illustrative examples are presented. In β secretase (2va7) computational titration flipped the amide groups of Gln12 and Asn37 and protonated a ligand amine yielding an improvement of 6.37 kcal mol−1 in the protein-ligand binding score. Protonation of Glu139 in mutant HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (2opq) allows a water bridge between the protein and inhibitor that increases the protein-ligand interaction score by 0.16 kcal mol−1. In human sialidase NEU2 complexed with an isobutyl ether mimetic inhibitor (2f11) computational titration suggested that protonating Glu218, deprotonating Arg237, flipping the amide bond on Tyr334, and optimizing the positions of several other polar protons would increase the protein-ligand interaction score by 0.71 kcal mol−1.

Background

Successful protein structure prediction requires accurate low-resolution scoring functions so that protein main chain conformations that are close to the native can be identified. Once that is accomplished, a more detailed and time-consuming treatment to produce all-atom models can be undertaken. The earliest low-resolution scoring used simple distance-based "contact potentials," but more recently, the relative orientations of interacting amino acids have been taken into account to improve performance.

Results

We developed a new knowledge-based scoring function, LoCo, that locates the interaction partners of each individual residue within a local coordinate system based only on the position of its main chain N, Cα and C atoms. LoCo was trained on a large set of experimentally determined structures and optimized using standard sets of modeled structures, or "decoys." No structure used to train or optimize the function was included among those used to test it. When tested against 29 other published main chain functions on a group of 77 commonly used decoy sets, our function outperformed all others in Cα RMSD rank of the best-scoring decoy, with statistically significant p-values < 0.05 for 26 out of the 29 other functions considered. LoCo is fast, requiring on average less than 6 microseconds per residue for interaction and scoring on commonly-used computer hardware.

Conclusions

Our function demonstrates an unmatched combination of accuracy, speed, and simplicity and shows excellent promise for protein structure prediction. Broader applications may include protein-protein interactions and protein design.

Protein–DNA interactions play a central role in regulatory processes at the genetic level. DNA-binding proteins recognize their targets by direct base–amino acid interactions and indirect conformational energy contribution from DNA deformations and elasticity. Knowledge-based approach based on the statistical analysis of protein–DNA complex structures has been successfully used to calculate interaction energies and specificities of direct and indirect readouts in protein–DNA recognition. Here, we have implemented the method as a webserver, which calculates direct and indirect readout energies and Z-scores, as a measure of specificity, using atomic coordinates of protein–DNA complexes. This server is freely available at . The only input to this webserver is the Protein Data Bank (PDB) style coordinate data of atoms or the PDB code itself. The server returns total energy Z-scores, which estimate the degree of sequence specificity of the protein–DNA complex. This webserver is expected to be useful for estimating interaction energy and DNA conformation energy, and relative contributions to the specificity from direct and indirect readout. It may also be useful for checking the quality of protein–DNA complex structures, and for engineering proteins and target DNAs.

A hierarchical approach has been developed for protein-protein docking. In the first step, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT)-based docking algorithm is used to globally sample all putative binding modes, in which the protein is represented by a reduced model, that is, each side chain on the protein surface is represented by its center of mass. Compared to conventional FFT docking with all-atom models, the FFT docking method with a reduced model is expected to generate more hits because it allows larger side-chain flexibility. Next, the filtered binding modes (normally several thousands) are refined by an iteratively derived knowledge-based scoring function ITScorePP and by considering backbone/loop flexibility using an ensemble docking algorithm. The distance-dependent potentials of ITScorePP were extracted by a physics-based iterative method, which circumvents the long-standing reference state problem in the knowledge-based approaches. With this hierarchical protocol, we have participated in the CAPRI experiments for Rounds 15–19 of 11 targets (T32-T42). In the predictor experiments, we achieved correct binding modes for six targets: three are with high accuracy (T40 for both distinct binding modes, T41, and T42), two are with medium accuracy (T34 and T37), and one is acceptable (T32). In the scorer experiments, of the seven target complexes that contain at least one acceptable mode submitted by the CAPRI predictor groups, we obtained correct binding modes for four targets: three are with high accuracy (T37, T40, and T41) and one is with medium accuracy (T34), suggesting good accuracy and robustness of ITScorePP.

Background

Virtual screening is used to distinguish potential leads from inactive compounds in a database of chemical samples. One method for accomplishing this is by docking compounds into the structure of a receptor binding site in order to rank-order compounds by the quality of the interactions they form with the receptor. It is generally established that docking can be reasonably successful at generating good poses of a ligand in an active site. However, the scoring functions that are used with docking are typically not successful at correctly ranking ligands according to binding affinity or even distinguishing correct poses of a given ligand from incorrect ones.

Results

We have developed a simple method for reducing the number of false positives in a virtual screen, meaning ligands which are scored highly by the docking program but do not bind well in reality. This method uses a docking program for pose generation without regard to scoring, followed by filtering with receptor-based pharmacophore searches. We applied it to three test-case targets: neuraminidase A, cyclin-dependent kinase 2, and the C1 domain of protein kinase C.

Conclusion

The pharmacophore filtering method can perform better than more traditional docking + scoring methods, and allows the advantages of both docking-based and pharmacophore-based approaches to virtual screening to be fully realized.