Flores SC, Gerstein MB. Predicting protein ligand binding motions with the conformation explorer.
BMC Bioinformatics 2011;
12:417. [PMID:
22032721 PMCID:
PMC3354956 DOI:
10.1186/1471-2105-12-417]
[Citation(s) in RCA: 7] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 05/31/2011] [Accepted: 10/27/2011] [Indexed: 11/26/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND
Knowledge of the structure of proteins bound to known or potential ligands is crucial for biological understanding and drug design. Often the 3D structure of the protein is available in some conformation, but binding the ligand of interest may involve a large scale conformational change which is difficult to predict with existing methods.
RESULTS
We describe how to generate ligand binding conformations of proteins that move by hinge bending, the largest class of motions. First, we predict the location of the hinge between domains. Second, we apply an Euler rotation to one of the domains about the hinge point. Third, we compute a short-time dynamical trajectory using Molecular Dynamics to equilibrate the protein and ligand and correct unnatural atomic positions. Fourth, we score the generated structures using a novel fitness function which favors closed or holo structures. By iterating the second through fourth steps we systematically minimize the fitness function, thus predicting the conformational change required for small ligand binding for five well studied proteins.
CONCLUSIONS
We demonstrate that the method in most cases successfully predicts the holo conformation given only an apo structure.
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