A flexible approach to induced fit docking

J Med Chem. 2007 Dec 27;50(26):6507-18. doi: 10.1021/jm070593p. Epub 2007 Nov 22.

Abstract

We present Fleksy, a new approach to consider both ligand and receptor flexibility in small molecule docking. Pivotal to our method is the use of a receptor ensemble to describe protein flexibility. To construct these ensembles, we use a backbone-dependent rotamer library and implement the concept of interaction sampling. The latter allows the evaluation of different orientations of ambivalent interaction partners. The docking stage consists of an ensemble-based soft-docking experiment using FlexX-Ensemble, followed by an effective flexible receptor-ligand complex optimization using Yasara. Fleksy produces a set of receptor-ligand complexes ranked using a consensus scoring function combining docking scores and force field energies. Averaged over three cross-docking datasets, containing 35 different receptor-ligand complexes in total, Fleksy reproduces the observed binding mode within 2.0 A for 78% of the complexes. This compares favorably to the rigid receptor FlexX program, which on average reaches a success rate of 44% for these datasets.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Binding Sites
  • Cyclic AMP-Dependent Protein Kinases / chemistry
  • Ligands*
  • Models, Molecular*
  • Protein Binding
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Receptors, Mineralocorticoid / chemistry

Substances

  • Ligands
  • Proteins
  • Receptors, Mineralocorticoid
  • Cyclic AMP-Dependent Protein Kinases