Solvated protein-DNA docking using HADDOCK

J Biomol NMR. 2013 May;56(1):51-63. doi: 10.1007/s10858-013-9734-x. Epub 2013 Apr 30.

Abstract

Interfacial water molecules play an important role in many aspects of protein-DNA specificity and recognition. Yet they have been mostly neglected in the computational modeling of these complexes. We present here a solvated docking protocol that allows explicit inclusion of water molecules in the docking of protein-DNA complexes and demonstrate its feasibility on a benchmark of 30 high-resolution protein-DNA complexes containing crystallographically-determined water molecules at their interfaces. Our protocol is capable of reproducing the solvation pattern at the interface and recovers hydrogen-bonded water-mediated contacts in many of the benchmark cases. Solvated docking leads to an overall improvement in the quality of the generated protein-DNA models for cases with limited conformational change of the partners upon complex formation. The applicability of this approach is demonstrated on real cases by docking a representative set of 6 complexes using unbound protein coordinates, model-built DNA and knowledge-based restraints. As HADDOCK supports the inclusion of a variety of NMR restraints, solvated docking is also applicable for NMR-based structure calculations of protein-DNA complexes.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Algorithms*
  • Computational Biology / methods*
  • DNA / chemistry
  • DNA / metabolism*
  • Hydrogen Bonding
  • Macromolecular Substances / chemistry
  • Macromolecular Substances / metabolism
  • Models, Molecular
  • Molecular Dynamics Simulation*
  • Protein Binding
  • Protein Conformation
  • Protein Interaction Mapping / methods
  • Proteins / chemistry*
  • Proteins / metabolism*
  • Solvents / chemistry
  • Solvents / metabolism
  • Water / chemistry
  • Water / metabolism*

Substances

  • Macromolecular Substances
  • Proteins
  • Solvents
  • Water
  • DNA