基于pose共享的蛋白质-配体构象并行搜索算法

RosettaLigand使用多次启动对接协议的方式对蛋白质-配体复合物构象空间进行采样,在串行或并行的构象搜索实例之间并不共享采样信息。因此并行对接与串行对接相比仅仅是增加了对接的速度,并不能改善对接的性能。我们对Rosetta 3.4版中的RosettaLigand算法进行了修改,在并行的对接实例之间共享采样信息,以实现多个对接实例协同优化采样进程。在一个包含11个目标的测试集合上进行的测试表明,共享采样信息在大多数对接实验中显著地提高了近天然构象在候选结构集合中的比例,同时还降低了整个候选结构集合的平均能量。     

Computational design of protein-small molecule interfaces

The computational design of proteins that bind small molecule ligands is one of the unsolved challenges in protein engineering. It is complicated by the relatively small size of the ligand which limits the number of intermolecular interactions. Furthermore, near-perfect geometries between interacting partners are required to achieve high binding affinities. For apolar, rigid small molecules the interactions are dominated by short-range van der Waals forces. As the number of polar groups in the ligand increases, hydrogen bonds, salt bridges, cation–π, and π–π interactions gain importance. These partial covalent interactions are longer ranged, and additionally, their strength depends on the environment (e.g. solvent exposure). To assess the current state of protein-small molecule interface design, we benchmark the popular computer algorithm Rosetta on a diverse set of 43 protein–ligand complexes. On average, we achieve sequence recoveries in the binding site of 59% when the ligand is allowed limited reorientation, and 48% when the ligand is allowed full reorientation. When simulating the redesign of a protein binding site, sequence recovery among residues that contribute most to binding was 52% when slight ligand reorientation was allowed, and 27% when full ligand reorientation was allowed. As expected, sequence recovery correlates with ligand displacement.