BALLDock/SLICK: A New Method for Protein-Carbohydrate Docking

Andreas Kerzmann, Jan Fuhrmann, Oliver Kohlbacher and Dirk Neumann*
Division for Simulation of Biological Systems, Center for Bioinformatics, University of Tbingen, Sand 14, 72076 Tbingen, Germany, and Junior Research Group Drug Transport, Center for Bioinformatics, Saarland University, Building E1 1, 66123 Saarbrcken, Germany
J. Chem. Inf. Model., 2008, 48 (8), pp 1616–1625
DOI: 10.1021/ci800103u
Publication Date (Web): July 23, 2008
Copyright © 2008 American Chemical Society

University of Tbingen.

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Saarland University.

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* Corresponding author e-mail: d.neumann@bioinf.uni-sb.de.

Abstract

Abstract Image

Protein−ligand docking is an essential technique in computer-aided drug design. While generally available docking programs work well for most drug classes, carbohydrates and carbohydrate-like compounds are often problematic for docking. We present a new docking method specifically designed to handle docking of carbohydrate-like compounds. BALLDock/SLICK combines an evolutionary docking algorithm for flexible ligands and flexible receptor side chains with carbohydrate-specific scoring and energy functions. The scoring function has been designed to identify accurate ligand poses, while the energy function yields accurate estimates of the binding free energies of these poses. On a test set of known protein-sugar complexes we demonstrate the ability of the approach to generate correct poses for almost all of the structures and achieve very low mean errors for the predicted binding free energies.

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