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Assessing the performance of the molecular mechanics/Poisson Boltzmann surface area and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area methods. II. The accuracy of ranking poses generated from docking.

ABSTRACT: In molecular docking, it is challenging to develop a scoring function that is accurate to conduct high-throughput screenings. Most scoring functions implemented in popular docking software packages were developed with many approximations for computational efficiency, which sacrifices the accuracy of prediction. With advanced technology and powerful computational hardware nowadays, it is feasible to use rigorous scoring functions, such as molecular mechanics/Poisson Boltzmann surface area (MM/PBSA) and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area (MM/GBSA) in molecular docking studies. Here, we systematically investigated the performance of MM/PBSA and MM/GBSA to identify the correct binding conformations and predict the binding free energies for 98 protein-ligand complexes. Comparison studies showed that MM/GBSA (69.4%) outperformed MM/PBSA (45.5%) and many popular scoring functions to identify the correct binding conformations. Moreover, we found that molecular dynamics simulations are necessary for some systems to identify the correct binding conformations. Based on our results, we proposed the guideline for MM/GBSA to predict the binding conformations. We then tested the performance of MM/GBSA and MM/PBSA to reproduce the binding free energies of the 98 protein-ligand complexes. The best prediction of MM/GBSA model with internal dielectric constant 2.0, produced a Spearman's correlation coefficient of 0.66, which is better than MM/PBSA (0.49) and almost all scoring functions used in molecular docking. In summary, MM/GBSA performs well for both binding pose predictions and binding free-energy estimations and is efficient to re-score the top-hit poses produced by other less-accurate scoring functions.

SUBMITTER: Hou T

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3043139 | biostudies-literature | 2011 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Assessing the performance of the molecular mechanics/Poisson Boltzmann surface area and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area methods. II. The accuracy of ranking poses generated from docking.

Hou Tingjun T Wang Junmei J Li Youyong Y Wang Wei W

Journal of computational chemistry 20101014 5

In molecular docking, it is challenging to develop a scoring function that is accurate to conduct high-throughput screenings. Most scoring functions implemented in popular docking software packages were developed with many approximations for computational efficiency, which sacrifices the accuracy of prediction. With advanced technology and powerful computational hardware nowadays, it is feasible to use rigorous scoring functions, such as molecular mechanics/Poisson Boltzmann surface area (MM/PBS ...[more]

PMID: 20949517

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Project description:Binding free energy calculations that make use of alchemical pathways are becoming increasingly feasible thanks to advances in hardware and algorithms. Although relative binding free energy (RBFE) calculations are starting to find widespread use, absolute binding free energy (ABFE) calculations are still being explored mainly in academic settings due to the high computational requirements and still uncertain predictive value. However, in some drug design scenarios, RBFE calculations are not applicable and ABFE calculations could provide an alternative. Computationally cheaper end-point calculations in implicit solvent, such as molecular mechanics Poisson-Boltzmann surface area (MMPBSA) calculations, could too be used if one is primarily interested in a relative ranking of affinities. Here, we compare MMPBSA calculations to previously performed absolute alchemical free energy calculations in their ability to correlate with experimental binding free energies for three sets of bromodomain-inhibitor pairs. Different MMPBSA approaches have been considered, including a standard single-trajectory protocol, a protocol that includes a binding entropy estimate, and protocols that take into account the ligand hydration shell. Despite the improvements observed with the latter two MMPBSA approaches, ABFE calculations were found to be overall superior in obtaining correlation with experimental affinities for the test cases considered. A difference in weighted average Pearson ([Formula: see text]) and Spearman ([Formula: see text]) correlations of 0.25 and 0.31 was observed when using a standard single-trajectory MMPBSA setup ([Formula: see text] = 0.64 and [Formula: see text] = 0.66 for ABFE; [Formula: see text] = 0.39 and [Formula: see text] = 0.35 for MMPBSA). The best performing MMPBSA protocols returned weighted average Pearson and Spearman correlations that were about 0.1 inferior to ABFE calculations: [Formula: see text] = 0.55 and [Formula: see text] = 0.56 when including an entropy estimate, and [Formula: see text] = 0.53 and [Formula: see text] = 0.55 when including explicit water molecules. Overall, the study suggests that ABFE calculations are indeed the more accurate approach, yet there is also value in MMPBSA calculations considering the lower compute requirements, and if agreement to experimental affinities in absolute terms is not of interest. Moreover, for the specific protein-ligand systems considered in this study, we find that including an explicit ligand hydration shell or a binding entropy estimate in the MMPBSA calculations resulted in significant performance improvements at a negligible computational cost.

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Dataset Information

Assessing the performance of the molecular mechanics/Poisson Boltzmann surface area and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area methods. II. The accuracy of ranking poses generated from docking.

Publications

Assessing the performance of the molecular mechanics/Poisson Boltzmann surface area and molecular mechanics/generalized Born surface area methods. II. The accuracy of ranking poses generated from docking.

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