Bernd Kramer

Evaluation of the FLEXX incremental construction algorithm for protein-ligand docking.

We report on a test of FLEXX, a fully automatic docking tool for flexible ligands, on a highly diverse data set of 200 protein–ligand complexes from the Protein Data Bank. In total 46.5% of the complexes of the data set can be reproduced by a FLEXX docking solution at rank 1 with an rms deviation (RMSD) from the observed structure of less than 2 Å. This rate rises to 70% if one looks at the entire generated solution set. FLEXX produces reliable results for ligands with up to 15 components which can be docked in 80% of the cases with acceptable accuracy. Ligands with more than 15 components tend to generate wrong solutions more often. The average runtime of FLEXX on this test set is 93 seconds per complex on a SUN Ultra‐30 workstation. In addition, we report on “cross‐docking” experiments, in which several receptor structures of complexes with identical proteins have been used for docking all cocrystallized ligands of these complexes. In most cases, these experiments show that FLEXX can acceptably dock a ligand into a foreign receptor structure. Finally we report on screening runs of ligands out of a library with 556 entries against ten different proteins. In eight cases FLEXX is able to find the original inhibitor within the top 7% of the total library. Proteins 1999;37:228–241. ©1999 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

The particle concept: placing discrete water molecules during protein-ligand docking predictions

Water is known to play a significant role in the formation of protein‐ligand complexes. In this paper, we focus on the influence of water molecules on the structure of protein‐ligand complexes. We present an algorithmic approach, called the particle concept, for integrating the placement of single water molecules in the docking algorithm of FlexX. FlexX is an incremental construction approach to ligand docking consisting of three phases: the selection of base fragments, the placement of the base fragments, and the incremental reconstruction of the ligand inside the active site of a protein. The goal of the extension is to find water molecules at favorable places in the protein‐ligand interface which may guide the placement of the ligand. In a preprocessing phase, favorable positions of water molecules inside the active site are calculated and stored in a list of possible water positions. During the incremental construction phase, water molecules are placed at the precomputed positions if they can form additional hydrogen bonds to the ligand. Steric constraints resulting from the water molecules as well as the geometry of the hydrogen bonds are used to optimize the ligand orientation in the active site during the reconstruction process. We have tested the particle concept on a series of 200 protein‐ligand complexes. Although the average improvement of the prediction results is minor, we were able to predict water molecules between the protein and the ligand correctly in several cases. For instance in the case of HIV‐1 protease, where a single water molecule between the protein and the ligand is known to be of importance in complex formation, significant improvements can be achieved. Proteins 1999;34:17–28.

Multiple automatic base selection: Protein-ligand docking based on incremental construction without manual intervention

A possible way of tackling the molecular docking problem arising in computer- aided drug design is the use of the incremental construction method. This method consists of three steps: the selection of a part of a molecule, a so- called base fragment, the placement of the base fragment into the active site of a protein, and the subsequent reconstruction of the complete drug molecule. Assuming that a part of a drug molecule is known, which is specific enough to be a good base fragment, the method is proven to be successful for a large set of docking examples. In addition, it leads to the fastest algorithms for flexible docking published so far. In most real-world applications of docking, large sets of ligands have to be tested for affinity to a given protein. Thus, manual selection of a base fragment is not practical. On the other hand, the selection of a base fragment is critical in that only few selections lead to a low-energy structure. We overcome this limitation by selecting a representative set of base fragments instead of a single one. In this paper, we present a set of rules and algorithms to automate this selection. In addition, we extend the incremental construction method to deal with multiple fragmentations of the drug molecule. Our results show that with multiple automated base selection, the quality of the docking predictions is almost as good as with one manually preselected base fragment. In addition, the set of solutions is more diverse and alternative binding modes with low scores are found. Although the run time of the overall algorithm increases, the method remains fast enough to search through large ligand data sets.

Docking of hydrophobic ligands with interaction-based matching algorithms.

MOTIVATION Matching of chemical interacting groups is a common concept for docking and fragment placement algorithms in computer-aided drug design. These algorithms have been proven to be reliable and fast if at least a certain number of hydrogen bonds or salt bridges occur. However, the algorithms typically run into problems if hydrophobic fragments or ligands should be placed. In order to dock hydrophobic fragments without significant loss of computational efficiency, we have extended the interaction model and placement algorithms in our docking tool FlexX. The concept of multi-level interactions is introduced into the algorithms for automatic selection and placement of base fragments. RESULTS With the multi-level interaction model and the corresponding algorithmic extensions, we were able to improve the overall performance of FlexX significantly. We tested the approach with a set of 200 protein-ligand complexes taken from the Brookhaven Protein Data Bank (PDB). The number of test cases which can be docked within 1.5 A RMSD from the crystal structure can be increased from 58 to 64%. The performance gain is paid for by an increase in computation time from 73 to 91 s on average per protein-ligand complex. AVAILABILITY The FlexX molecular docking software is available for UNIX platforms IRIX, Solaris and Linux. See http://cartan.gmd.de/FlexX for additional information.

CASP2 experiences with docking flexible ligands using FLEXX

We have applied our docking program FLEXX to all eight CASP2 targets involving protein complexes with small ligands. Of the seven targets that were kept in the CASP2 experiment, we could solve two. We found important parts of the solution in four other examples, and were unsuccessful on the remaining example. This paper discusses all predictions in detail. Each of our prediction runs took just a few minutes of computer time on a standard workstation and could thus be demonstrated in real time at the CASP meeting. We believe that this speed is the prime strength of our program FLEXX. In quality, our predictions are competitive with those produced by other predictors. The experiment showed that possible objectives of improvement of the FLEXX program are to incorporate relevant aspects of receptor flexibility, deal with water molecules in the receptor pocket, allow for a postoptimization to refine favorable complexes, and improve the scoring function. Proteins, Suppl. 1:221–225, 1997.