1
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Carpenter KA, Altman RB. Databases of ligand-binding pockets and protein-ligand interactions. Comput Struct Biotechnol J 2024; 23:1320-1338. [PMID: 38585646 PMCID: PMC10997877 DOI: 10.1016/j.csbj.2024.03.015] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/06/2024] [Revised: 03/16/2024] [Accepted: 03/17/2024] [Indexed: 04/09/2024] Open
Abstract
Many research groups and institutions have created a variety of databases curating experimental and predicted data related to protein-ligand binding. The landscape of available databases is dynamic, with new databases emerging and established databases becoming defunct. Here, we review the current state of databases that contain binding pockets and protein-ligand binding interactions. We have compiled a list of such databases, fifty-three of which are currently available for use. We discuss variation in how binding pockets are defined and summarize pocket-finding methods. We organize the fifty-three databases into subgroups based on goals and contents, and describe standard use cases. We also illustrate that pockets within the same protein are characterized differently across different databases. Finally, we assess critical issues of sustainability, accessibility and redundancy.
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Affiliation(s)
- Kristy A. Carpenter
- Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
| | - Russ B. Altman
- Department of Biomedical Data Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Department of Bioengineering, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Department of Genetics, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
- Department of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, USA
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2
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Holmes J, Islam SM, Milligan KA. Exploring Cannabinoids as Potential Inhibitors of SARS-CoV-2 Papain-like Protease: Insights from Computational Analysis and Molecular Dynamics Simulations. Viruses 2024; 16:878. [PMID: 38932170 PMCID: PMC11209085 DOI: 10.3390/v16060878] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/06/2024] [Revised: 05/21/2024] [Accepted: 05/27/2024] [Indexed: 06/28/2024] Open
Abstract
The emergence of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has triggered a global COVID-19 pandemic, challenging healthcare systems worldwide. Effective therapeutic strategies against this novel coronavirus remain limited, underscoring the urgent need for innovative approaches. The present research investigates the potential of cannabis compounds as therapeutic agents against SARS-CoV-2 through their interaction with the virus's papain-like protease (PLpro) protein, a crucial element in viral replication and immune evasion. Computational methods, including molecular docking and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, were employed to screen cannabis compounds against PLpro and analyze their binding mechanisms and interaction patterns. The results showed cannabinoids with binding affinities ranging from -6.1 kcal/mol to -4.6 kcal/mol, forming interactions with PLpro. Notably, Cannabigerolic and Cannabidiolic acids exhibited strong binding contacts with critical residues in PLpro's active region, indicating their potential as viral replication inhibitors. MD simulations revealed the dynamic behavior of cannabinoid-PLpro complexes, highlighting stable binding conformations and conformational changes over time. These findings shed light on the mechanisms underlying cannabis interaction with SARS-CoV-2 PLpro, aiding in the rational design of antiviral therapies. Future research will focus on experimental validation, optimizing binding affinity and selectivity, and preclinical assessments to develop effective treatments against COVID-19.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Shahidul M. Islam
- Department of Chemistry, Delaware State University, 1200 N. DuPont Hwy, Dover, DE 19901, USA; (J.H.); (K.A.M.)
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3
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Stadler KA, Ortiz-Joya LJ, Singh Sahrawat A, Buhlheller C, Gruber K, Pavkov-Keller T, O'Hagan TB, Guarné A, Pulido S, Marín-Villa M, Zangger K, Gubensäk N. Structural investigation of Trypanosoma cruzi Akt-like kinase as drug target against Chagas disease. Sci Rep 2024; 14:10039. [PMID: 38693166 PMCID: PMC11063076 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-024-59654-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/19/2024] [Accepted: 04/12/2024] [Indexed: 05/03/2024] Open
Abstract
According to the World Health Organization, Chagas disease (CD) is the most prevalent poverty-promoting neglected tropical disease. Alarmingly, climate change is accelerating the geographical spreading of CD causative parasite, Trypanosoma cruzi, which additionally increases infection rates. Still, CD treatment remains challenging due to a lack of safe and efficient drugs. In this work, we analyze the viability of T. cruzi Akt-like kinase (TcAkt) as drug target against CD including primary structural and functional information about a parasitic Akt protein. Nuclear Magnetic Resonance derived information in combination with Molecular Dynamics simulations offer detailed insights into structural properties of the pleckstrin homology (PH) domain of TcAkt and its binding to phosphatidylinositol phosphate ligands (PIP). Experimental data combined with Alpha Fold proposes a model for the mechanism of action of TcAkt involving a PIP-induced disruption of the intramolecular interface between the kinase and the PH domain resulting in an open conformation enabling TcAkt kinase activity. Further docking experiments reveal that TcAkt is recognized by human inhibitors PIT-1 and capivasertib, and TcAkt inhibition by UBMC-4 and UBMC-6 is achieved via binding to TcAkt kinase domain. Our in-depth structural analysis of TcAkt reveals potential sites for drug development against CD, located at activity essential regions.
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Affiliation(s)
- Karina A Stadler
- Institute of Chemistry/Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Lesly J Ortiz-Joya
- Institute of Chemistry/Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- Programa de Estudio y Control de Enfermedades Tropicales (PECET), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
- Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
| | - Amit Singh Sahrawat
- Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- Innophore GmbH, Graz, Austria
| | | | - Karl Gruber
- Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- Innophore GmbH, Graz, Austria
- Field of Excellence BioHealth, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- BioTechMed-Graz, Graz, Austria
| | - Tea Pavkov-Keller
- Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- Field of Excellence BioHealth, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
- BioTechMed-Graz, Graz, Austria
| | | | - Alba Guarné
- Department of Biochemistry, McGill University, Montreal, Canada
| | - Sergio Pulido
- Programa de Estudio y Control de Enfermedades Tropicales (PECET), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
- LifeFactors ZF SAS, Rionegro, Colombia
| | - Marcel Marín-Villa
- Programa de Estudio y Control de Enfermedades Tropicales (PECET), Facultad de Medicina, Universidad de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia
| | - Klaus Zangger
- Institute of Chemistry/Organic and Bioorganic Chemistry, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
- Field of Excellence BioHealth, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
- BioTechMed-Graz, Graz, Austria.
| | - Nina Gubensäk
- Institute of Molecular Biosciences, University of Graz, Graz, Austria.
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4
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Belghit H, Spivak M, Dauchez M, Baaden M, Jonquet-Prevoteau J. From complex data to clear insights: visualizing molecular dynamics trajectories. FRONTIERS IN BIOINFORMATICS 2024; 4:1356659. [PMID: 38665177 PMCID: PMC11043564 DOI: 10.3389/fbinf.2024.1356659] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/15/2023] [Accepted: 03/14/2024] [Indexed: 04/28/2024] Open
Abstract
Advances in simulations, combined with technological developments in high-performance computing, have made it possible to produce a physically accurate dynamic representation of complex biological systems involving millions to billions of atoms over increasingly long simulation times. The analysis of these computed simulations is crucial, involving the interpretation of structural and dynamic data to gain insights into the underlying biological processes. However, this analysis becomes increasingly challenging due to the complexity of the generated systems with a large number of individual runs, ranging from hundreds to thousands of trajectories. This massive increase in raw simulation data creates additional processing and visualization challenges. Effective visualization techniques play a vital role in facilitating the analysis and interpretation of molecular dynamics simulations. In this paper, we focus mainly on the techniques and tools that can be used for visualization of molecular dynamics simulations, among which we highlight the few approaches used specifically for this purpose, discussing their advantages and limitations, and addressing the future challenges of molecular dynamics visualization.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hayet Belghit
- Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, CNRS, MEDYC, Reims, France
| | - Mariano Spivak
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Laboratoire de Biochimie Théorique, Paris, France
| | - Manuel Dauchez
- Université de Reims Champagne-Ardenne, CNRS, MEDYC, Reims, France
| | - Marc Baaden
- Université Paris Cité, CNRS, Laboratoire de Biochimie Théorique, Paris, France
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5
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Carbery A, Buttenschoen M, Skyner R, von Delft F, Deane CM. Learnt representations of proteins can be used for accurate prediction of small molecule binding sites on experimentally determined and predicted protein structures. J Cheminform 2024; 16:32. [PMID: 38486231 PMCID: PMC10941399 DOI: 10.1186/s13321-024-00821-4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/07/2023] [Accepted: 03/01/2024] [Indexed: 03/17/2024] Open
Abstract
Protein-ligand binding site prediction is a useful tool for understanding the functional behaviour and potential drug-target interactions of a novel protein of interest. However, most binding site prediction methods are tested by providing crystallised ligand-bound (holo) structures as input. This testing regime is insufficient to understand the performance on novel protein targets where experimental structures are not available. An alternative option is to provide computationally predicted protein structures, but this is not commonly tested. However, due to the training data used, computationally-predicted protein structures tend to be extremely accurate, and are often biased toward a holo conformation. In this study we describe and benchmark IF-SitePred, a protein-ligand binding site prediction method which is based on the labelling of ESM-IF1 protein language model embeddings combined with point cloud annotation and clustering. We show that not only is IF-SitePred competitive with state-of-the-art methods when predicting binding sites on experimental structures, but it performs better on proxies for novel proteins where low accuracy has been simulated by molecular dynamics. Finally, IF-SitePred outperforms other methods if ensembles of predicted protein structures are generated.
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Affiliation(s)
- Anna Carbery
- Oxford Protein Informatics Group, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3LB, UK
- Diamond Light Source, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, OX11 0DE, UK
| | - Martin Buttenschoen
- Oxford Protein Informatics Group, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3LB, UK
| | - Rachael Skyner
- OMass Therapeutics, Building 4000, Chancellor Court, John Smith Drive, ARC Oxford, OX4 2GX, UK
| | - Frank von Delft
- Diamond Light Source, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, OX11 0DE, UK
- Centre for Medicines Discovery, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX3 7DQ, UK
- Research Complex at Harwell, Harwell Science and Innovation Campus, Didcot, OX11 0FA, United Kingdom
- Department of Biochemistry, University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, 2006, South Africa
| | - Charlotte M Deane
- Oxford Protein Informatics Group, Department of Statistics, University of Oxford, Oxford, OX1 3LB, UK.
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6
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Akawa OB, Okunlola FO, Alahmdi MI, Abo-Dya NE, Sidhom PA, Ibrahim MAA, Shibl MF, Khan S, Soliman MES. Multi-cavity molecular descriptor interconnections: Enhanced protocol for prediction of serum albumin drug binding. Eur J Pharm Biopharm 2024; 194:9-19. [PMID: 37984594 DOI: 10.1016/j.ejpb.2023.11.003] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/01/2023] [Revised: 11/03/2023] [Accepted: 11/03/2023] [Indexed: 11/22/2023]
Abstract
The role of human serum albumin (HSA) in the transport of molecules predicates its involvement in the determination of drug distribution and metabolism. Optimization of ADME properties are analogous to HSA binding thus this is imperative to the drug discovery process. Currently, various in silico predictive tools exist to complement the drug discovery process, however, the prediction of possible ligand-binding sites on HSA has posed several challenges. Herein, we present a strong and deeper-than-surface case for the prediction of HSA-ligand binding sites using multi-cavity molecular descriptors by exploiting all experimentally available and crystallized HSA-bound drugs. Unlike previously proposed models found in literature, we established an in-depth correlation between the physicochemical properties of available crystallized HSA-bound drugs and different HSA binding site characteristics to precisely predict the binding sites of investigational molecules. Molecular descriptors such as the number of hydrogen bond donors (nHD), number of heteroatoms (nHet), topological polar surface area (TPSA), molecular weight (MW), and distribution coefficient (LogD) were correlated against HSA binding site characteristics, including hydrophobicity, hydrophilicity, enclosure, exposure, contact, site volume, and donor/acceptor ratio. Molecular descriptors nHD, TPSA, LogD, nHet, and MW were found to possess the most inherent capacities providing baseline information for the prediction of serum albumin binding site. We believe that these associations may form the bedrock for establishing a solid correlation between the physicochemical properties and Albumin binding site architecture. Information presented in this report would serve as critical in provisions of rational drug designing as well as drug delivery, bioavailability, and pharmacokinetics.
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Affiliation(s)
- Oluwole B Akawa
- Molecular Bio-computational and Drug Design Laboratory, School of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu Natal, Westville Campus, Durban 4001, South Africa
| | - Felix O Okunlola
- Molecular Bio-computational and Drug Design Laboratory, School of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu Natal, Westville Campus, Durban 4001, South Africa
| | - Mohammed Issa Alahmdi
- Faculty of Science, Department of Chemistry, University of Tabuk, Tabuk 7149, Saudi Arabia
| | - Nader E Abo-Dya
- Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tabuk University, Tabuk 71491, Saudi Arabia; Department of Pharmaceutical Organic Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Zagazig University, Zagazig 44519, Egypt
| | - Peter A Sidhom
- Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of Pharmacy, Tanta University, Tanta 31527, Egypt
| | - Mahmoud A A Ibrahim
- Molecular Bio-computational and Drug Design Laboratory, School of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu Natal, Westville Campus, Durban 4001, South Africa; Computational Chemistry Laboratory, Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Minia University, Minia 61519
| | - Mohamed F Shibl
- Renewable Energy Program, Center for Sustainable Development, College of Arts and Sciences, Qatar University, 2713 Doha, Qatar
| | - Shahzeb Khan
- Centre for Pharmaceutical Engineering Science, Faculty of life Science, School of Pharmacy and Medical Sciences, University of Bradford UK, West Yorkshire, BD7 1DP, UK
| | - Mahmoud E S Soliman
- Molecular Bio-computational and Drug Design Laboratory, School of Health Sciences, University of KwaZulu Natal, Westville Campus, Durban 4001, South Africa.
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7
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Gagliardi L, Rocchia W. SiteFerret: Beyond Simple Pocket Identification in Proteins. J Chem Theory Comput 2023; 19:5242-5259. [PMID: 37470784 PMCID: PMC10413863 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.2c01306] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/23/2022] [Indexed: 07/21/2023]
Abstract
We present a novel method for the automatic detection of pockets on protein molecular surfaces. The algorithm is based on an ad hoc hierarchical clustering of virtual probe spheres obtained from the geometrical primitives used by the NanoShaper software to build the solvent-excluded molecular surface. The final ranking of putative pockets is based on the Isolation Forest method, an unsupervised learning approach originally developed for anomaly detection. A detailed importance analysis of pocket features provides insight into which geometrical (clustering) and chemical (amino acidic composition) properties characterize a good binding site. The method also provides a segmentation of pockets into smaller subpockets. We prove that subpockets are a convenient representation to pinpoint the binding site with great precision. SiteFerret is outstanding in its versatility, accurately predicting a wide range of binding sites, from those binding small molecules to those binding peptides, including difficult shallow sites.
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Walter Rocchia
- CONCEPT Lab, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Via Melen - 83, B Block, 16152 Genova, Italy
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8
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Azad I, Khan T, Ahmad N, Khan AR, Akhter Y. Updates on drug designing approach through computational strategies: a review. Future Sci OA 2023; 9:FSO862. [PMID: 37180609 PMCID: PMC10167725 DOI: 10.2144/fsoa-2022-0085] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 6.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/14/2022] [Accepted: 04/12/2023] [Indexed: 05/16/2023] Open
Abstract
The drug discovery and development (DDD) process in pursuit of novel drug candidates is a challenging procedure requiring lots of time and resources. Therefore, computer-aided drug design (CADD) methodologies are used extensively to promote proficiency in drug development in a systematic and time-effective manner. The point in reference is SARS-CoV-2 which has emerged as a global pandemic. In the absence of any confirmed drug moiety to treat the infection, the science fraternity adopted hit and trial methods to come up with a lead drug compound. This article is an overview of the virtual methodologies, which assist in finding novel hits and help in the progression of drug development in a short period with a specific medicinal solution.
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Affiliation(s)
- Iqbal Azad
- Department of Chemistry, Integral University, Dasauli, P.O. Bas-ha, Kursi Road, Lucknow, 226026, UP, India
| | - Tahmeena Khan
- Department of Chemistry, Integral University, Dasauli, P.O. Bas-ha, Kursi Road, Lucknow, 226026, UP, India
| | - Naseem Ahmad
- Department of Chemistry, Integral University, Dasauli, P.O. Bas-ha, Kursi Road, Lucknow, 226026, UP, India
| | - Abdul Rahman Khan
- Department of Chemistry, Integral University, Dasauli, P.O. Bas-ha, Kursi Road, Lucknow, 226026, UP, India
| | - Yusuf Akhter
- Department of Biotechnology, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Vidya Vihar, Raebareli Road, Lucknow, UP, 2260025, India
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9
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Huang H, Jones LH. Covalent drug discovery using sulfur(VI) fluoride exchange warheads. Expert Opin Drug Discov 2023:1-11. [PMID: 37243622 DOI: 10.1080/17460441.2023.2218642] [Citation(s) in RCA: 5] [Impact Index Per Article: 5.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/25/2023] [Accepted: 05/23/2023] [Indexed: 05/29/2023]
Abstract
INTRODUCTION Covalent drug discovery has traditionally focused on targeting cysteine, but the amino acid is often absent in protein binding sites. This review makes the case to move beyond cysteine labeling using sulfur (VI) fluoride exchange (SuFEx) chemistry to expand the druggable proteome. AREAS COVERED Recent advances in SuFEx medicinal chemistry and chemical biology are described, which have enabled the development of covalent chemical probes that site-selectively engage amino acid residues (including tyrosine, lysine, histidine, serine, and threonine) in binding pockets. Areas covered include chemoproteomic mapping of the targetable proteome, structure-based design of covalent inhibitors and molecular glues, metabolic stability profiling, and synthetic methodologies that have expedited the delivery of SuFEx modulators. EXPERT OPINION Despite recent innovations in SuFEx medicinal chemistry, focused preclinical research is required to ensure the field moves from early chemical probe discovery to the delivery of transformational covalent drug candidates. The authors believe that covalent drug candidates designed to engage residues beyond cysteine using sulfonyl exchange warheads will likely enter clinical trials in the coming years.
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Affiliation(s)
- Huang Huang
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Lyn H Jones
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
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10
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Wang D, Yang D, Yang L, Diao L, Zhang Y, Li Y, Wang H, Ren J, Cheng L, Tan Q, Zhang R, Han X, Zhang X, Wang B, Li D, Chen M, Hermjakob H, Li Y, LaBaer J, Zhou Z, Yu X. Human Autoantigen Atlas: Searching for the Hallmarks of Autoantigens. J Proteome Res 2023. [PMID: 37183442 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jproteome.2c00799] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 05/16/2023]
Abstract
Understanding autoimmunity to endogenous proteins is crucial in diagnosing and treating autoimmune diseases. In this work, we developed a user-friendly AAgAtlas portal (http://biokb.ncpsb.org.cn/aagatlas_portal/index.php#), which can be used to search for 8045 non-redundant autoantigens (AAgs) and 47 post-translationally modified AAgs against 1073 human diseases that are prioritized by a credential score developed by multisource evidence. Using AAgAtlas, the immunogenic properties of human AAgs was systematically elucidated according to their genetic, biophysical, cytological, expression profile, and evolutionary characteristics. The results indicated that human AAgs are evolutionally conserved in protein sequence and enriched in three hydrophilic and polar amino acid residues (K, D, and E) that are located at the protein surface. AAgs are enriched in proteins that are involved in nucleic acid binding, transferase, and the cytoskeleton. Genome, transcriptome, and proteome analyses further indicated that AAb production is associated with gene variance and abnormal protein expression related to the pathological activities of different tumors. Collectively, our data outlines the hallmarks of human AAgs that facilitate the understanding of humoral autoimmunity and the identification of biomarkers of human diseases.
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Affiliation(s)
- Dan Wang
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Dong Yang
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Liuhui Yang
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Lihong Diao
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Yuqi Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Yang Li
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Hongye Wang
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Jing Ren
- Department of Clinical Laboratory, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China
| | - Linlin Cheng
- Department of Clinical Laboratory, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China
| | - Qiaoyun Tan
- Cancer Center, Union Hospital, Tongji Medical College, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan 430022, China
| | - Ran Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Xiaohong Han
- Clinical Pharmacology Research Center, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, State Key Laboratory of Complex Severe and Rare Diseases, NMPA Key Laboratory for Clinical Research and Evaluation of Drug, Beijing Key Laboratory of Clinical PK & PD Investigation for Innovative Drugs, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100730, China
| | - Xiaohan Zhang
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
- College of Medicine and Integrated Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing 210023, China
| | - Bingwei Wang
- College of Medicine and Integrated Medicine, Nanjing University of Chinese Medicine, Nanjing 210023, China
| | - Dong Li
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
| | - Meng Chen
- National Cancer Center/National Clinical Research Center for Cancer/Cancer Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and Peking Union Medical College, Beijing 100021, China
| | - Henning Hermjakob
- European Molecular Biology Laboratory, European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI), Wellcome Trust Genome Campus, Hinxton, Cambridge CB10 1SD, UK
| | - Yongzhe Li
- Department of Clinical Laboratory, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100730, China
| | - Joshua LaBaer
- The Virginia G. Piper Center for Personalized Diagnostics, Biodesign Institute, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona 85287, United States
| | - Zhou Zhou
- Department of Laboratory Medicine, National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases and Fuwai Hospital, Peking Union Medical College and Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Beijing 100037, China
| | - Xiaobo Yu
- State Key Laboratory of Proteomics, Beijing Proteome Research Center, National Center for Protein Sciences-Beijing (PHOENIX Center), Beijing Institute of Lifeomics, Beijing 102206, China
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11
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Heslop R, Gao M, Brito Lira A, Sternlieb T, Loock M, Sanghi SR, Cestari I. Genome-Wide Libraries for Protozoan Pathogen Drug Target Screening Using Yeast Surface Display. ACS Infect Dis 2023; 9:1078-1091. [PMID: 37083339 PMCID: PMC10187560 DOI: 10.1021/acsinfecdis.2c00568] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/11/2022] [Indexed: 04/22/2023]
Abstract
The lack of genetic tools to manipulate protozoan pathogens has limited the use of genome-wide approaches to identify drug or vaccine targets and understand these organisms' biology. We have developed an efficient method to construct genome-wide libraries for yeast surface display (YSD) and developed a YSD fitness screen (YSD-FS) to identify drug targets. We show the efficacy of our method by generating genome-wide libraries for Trypanosoma brucei, Trypanosoma cruzi, and Giardia lamblia parasites. Each library has a diversity of ∼105 to 106 clones, representing ∼6- to 30-fold of the parasite's genome. Nanopore sequencing confirmed the libraries' genome coverage with multiple clones for each parasite gene. Western blot and imaging analysis confirmed surface expression of the G. lamblia library proteins in yeast. Using the YSD-FS assay, we identified bonafide interactors of metronidazole, a drug used to treat protozoan and bacterial infections. We also found enrichment in nucleotide-binding domain sequences associated with yeast increased fitness to metronidazole, indicating that this drug might target multiple enzymes containing nucleotide-binding domains. The libraries are valuable biological resources for discovering drug or vaccine targets, ligand receptors, protein-protein interactions, and pathogen-host interactions. The library assembly approach can be applied to other organisms or expression systems, and the YSD-FS assay might help identify new drug targets in protozoan pathogens.
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Affiliation(s)
- Rhiannon Heslop
- Institute
of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Montreal, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
- Faculté
de Pharmacie de Tours, 31, Avenue Monge, 37200 Tours, France
| | - Mengjin Gao
- Institute
of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Montreal, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
| | - Andressa Brito Lira
- Institute
of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Montreal, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
| | - Tamara Sternlieb
- Institute
of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Montreal, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
| | - Mira Loock
- Institute
of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Montreal, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
| | - Sahil Rao Sanghi
- Institute
of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Montreal, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
| | - Igor Cestari
- Institute
of Parasitology, McGill University, Ste Anne de Bellevue, Montreal, QC H9X 3V9, Canada
- Division
of Experimental Medicine, McGill University, Montreal, QC H4A 3J1, Canada
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12
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Rayhan M, Siddiquee MF, Shahriar A, Ahmed H, Mahmud AR, Alam MS, Uddin MR, Acharjee M, Shimu MSS, Shamsir MS, Emran TB. Structural characterization of a novel luciferase-like-monooxygenase from Pseudomonas meliae– an in-silico approach.. [DOI: 10.1101/2023.03.27.534437] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 09/01/2023]
Abstract
AbstractBackgroundLuciferase is a well-known oxidative enzyme that produces bioluminescence. ThePseudomonas meliaeis a plant pathogen that causes wood rot on nectarine and peach and possesses a luciferase-like monooxygenase. After activation, it produces bioluminescence, and the pathogen’s bioluminescence is a visual indicator of diseased plants.MethodsThe present study aims to model and characterize the luciferase-like monooxygenase protein inP. meliaefor its similarity to well-established luciferase. In this study, the luciferase-like monooxygenase fromP. meliaeinfects chinaberry plants has been modeled first and then studied by comparing it with existing known luciferase. Also, the similarities between uncharacterized luciferase fromP. meliaeand template fromGeobacillus thermodenitrificanswere analyzed to find the novelty ofP. meliae.ResultsThe results suggest that the absence of bioluminescence inP. meliaecould be due to the evolutionary mutation in positions 138 and 311. The active site remains identical except for two amino acids;P. meliaeTyr138 instead of His138 and Leu311 instead of His311. Therefore, theP. meliaewill have a potential future application, and mutation of the residues 138 and 311 can be restored luciferase light-emitting ability.ConclusionsThis study will help further improve, activate, and repurpose the luciferase fromP. meliaeas a reporter for gene expression.
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13
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Sunsetting Binding MOAD with its last data update and the addition of 3D-ligand polypharmacology tools. Sci Rep 2023; 13:3008. [PMID: 36810894 PMCID: PMC9944886 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-29996-w] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/05/2022] [Accepted: 02/14/2023] [Indexed: 02/24/2023] Open
Abstract
Binding MOAD is a database of protein-ligand complexes and their affinities with many structured relationships across the dataset. The project has been in development for over 20 years, but now, the time has come to bring it to a close. Currently, the database contains 41,409 structures with affinity coverage for 15,223 (37%) complexes. The website BindingMOAD.org provides numerous tools for polypharmacology exploration. Current relationships include links for structures with sequence similarity, 2D ligand similarity, and binding-site similarity. In this last update, we have added 3D ligand similarity using ROCS to identify ligands which may not necessarily be similar in two dimensions but can occupy the same three-dimensional space. For the 20,387 different ligands present in the database, a total of 1,320,511 3D-shape matches between the ligands were added. Examples of the utility of 3D-shape matching in polypharmacology are presented. Finally, plans for future access to the project data are outlined.
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14
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Dann GP, Liu H, Nowak RP, Jones LH. Cereblon target validation using a covalent inhibitor of neosubstrate recruitment. Methods Enzymol 2023; 681:155-167. [PMID: 36764755 DOI: 10.1016/bs.mie.2022.08.056] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/31/2022]
Abstract
Small molecule ligands of cereblon (CRBN), a component of an E3 ubiquitin ligase complex, such as immunomodulatory drugs (IMiDs) or proteolysis targeting chimeras (PROTACs), induce new interactions between the E3 and a target protein that is subsequently polyubiquitinated and proteasomally degraded. The development of new degraders requires validation of CRBN-dependence and existing methods include the use of engineered CRBN knockout cell lines, or PROTACs directed to CRBN itself. Technical limitations of these approaches necessitate a simple and rapid pharmacological method of CRBN inhibition. We developed a sulfonyl fluoride covalent CRBN ligand based on the IMiD EM12 called EM12-SO2F that was designed to engage His353 on the surface of the IMiD binding site. EM12-SO2F does not act as a molecular glue degrader like other IMiDs, and instead serves as an inhibitor of such function by blocking the degrader binding site. We demonstrate utility of EM12-SO2F by inhibiting the degradation of the zinc-finger transcription factor and CRBN neosubstrate IKZF1 by the molecular glue degrader lenalidomide. Increasingly, libraries of degrader molecules are being screened phenotypically to identify starting points for hit elaboration, that simultaneously reveals new therapeutic targets amenable to degradation. Indeed, targeted protein degradation has become an exciting new therapeutic modality and EM12-SO2F augments the chemical biology toolbox that will advance this area of drug discovery research.
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Affiliation(s)
- Geoffrey P Dann
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, United States; Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Hu Liu
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, United States; Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Radosław P Nowak
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, United States; Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States
| | - Lyn H Jones
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, United States; Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, United States.
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15
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Gomari MM, Tarighi P, Choupani E, Abkhiz S, Mohamadzadeh M, Rostami N, Sadroddiny E, Baammi S, Uversky VN, Dokholyan NV. Structural evolution of Delta lineage of SARS-CoV-2. Int J Biol Macromol 2023; 226:1116-1140. [PMID: 36435470 PMCID: PMC9683856 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijbiomac.2022.11.227] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/17/2022] [Revised: 11/19/2022] [Accepted: 11/21/2022] [Indexed: 11/27/2022]
Abstract
One of the main obstacles in prevention and treatment of COVID-19 is the rapid evolution of the SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. Given that Spike is the main target of common treatments of COVID-19, mutations occurring at this virulent factor can affect the effectiveness of treatments. The B.1.617.2 lineage of SARS-CoV-2, being characterized by many Spike mutations inside and outside of its receptor-binding domain (RBD), shows high infectivity and relative resistance to existing cures. Here, utilizing a wide range of computational biology approaches, such as immunoinformatics, molecular dynamics (MD), analysis of intrinsically disordered regions (IDRs), protein-protein interaction analyses, residue scanning, and free energy calculations, we examine the structural and biological attributes of the B.1.617.2 Spike protein. Furthermore, the antibody design protocol of Rosetta was implemented for evaluation the stability and affinity improvement of the Bamlanivimab (LY-CoV55) antibody, which is not capable of interactions with the B.1.617.2 Spike. We observed that the detected mutations in the Spike of the B1.617.2 variant of concern can cause extensive structural changes compatible with the described variation in immunogenicity, secondary and tertiary structure, oligomerization potency, Furin cleavability, and drug targetability. Compared to the Spike of Wuhan lineage, the B.1.617.2 Spike is more stable and binds to the Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) with higher affinity.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mohammad Mahmoudi Gomari
- Student Research Committee, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1449614535, Iran; Department of Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Allied Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1449614535, Iran
| | - Parastoo Tarighi
- Department of Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Allied Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1449614535, Iran
| | - Edris Choupani
- Department of Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Allied Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1449614535, Iran
| | - Shadi Abkhiz
- Department of Medical Biotechnology, Faculty of Allied Medicine, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1449614535, Iran
| | - Masoud Mohamadzadeh
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, University of Hormozgan, Bandar Abbas 7916193145, Iran
| | - Neda Rostami
- Department of Chemical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Arak University, Arak 3848177584, Iran
| | - Esmaeil Sadroddiny
- Medical Biotechnology Department, School of Advanced Technologies in Medicine, Tehran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran 1417613151, Iran
| | - Soukayna Baammi
- African Genome Centre (AGC), Mohammed VI Polytechnic University, Benguerir 43150, Morocco
| | - Vladimir N Uversky
- Department of Molecular Medicine and USF Health Byrd Alzheimer's Research Institute, Morsani College of Medicine, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA; Research Center for Molecular Mechanisms of Aging and Age-Related Diseases, Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, 141700 Dolgoprudny, Russia.
| | - Nikolay V Dokholyan
- Department of Pharmacology, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, Hershey, PA 16802, USA.
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Dutta A, Prasad Kanaujia S. MlaC belongs to a unique class of non-canonical substrate-binding proteins and follows a novel phospholipid-binding mechanism. J Struct Biol 2022; 214:107896. [PMID: 36084896 DOI: 10.1016/j.jsb.2022.107896] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/27/2022] [Revised: 09/01/2022] [Accepted: 09/02/2022] [Indexed: 12/30/2022]
Abstract
The outer membrane (OM) of Gram-negative bacteria acts as a formidable barrier against a plethora of detrimental compounds owing to its asymmetric nature. This is because the OM possesses lipopolysaccharides (LPSs) in the outer leaflet and phospholipids (PLs) in the inner leaflet. The maintenance of lipid asymmetry (Mla) system is involved in preserving the distribution of PLs in OM. The periplasmic component of the system MlaC serves as the substrate-binding protein (SBP) that shuttles PLs between the inner and outer membranes. However, an in-depth report highlighting its mechanism of ligand binding is still lacking. This study reports the crystal structure of MlaC from Escherichia coli (EcMlaC) at a resolution of 2.5 Å in a quasi-open state, complexed with PL. The structural analysis reveals that EcMlaC and orthologs comprise two major domains, viz. nuclear transport factor 2-like (NTF2-like) and phospholipid-binding protein (PBP). Each domain can be further divided into two subdomains arranged in a discontinuous fashion. This study further reveals that EcMlaC is polyspecific in nature and follows a reverse mechanism of the opening of the substrate-binding site during the ligand binding. Furthermore, MlaC can bind two PLs by forming subsites in the binding pocket. These findings, altogether, have led to the proposition of the unique "segmented domain movement" mechanism of PL binding, not reported for any known SBP to date. Further, unlike typical SBPs, MlaC has originated from a cystatin-like fold. Overall, this study establishes MlaC to be a non-canonical SBP with a unique ligand-binding mechanism.
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Affiliation(s)
- Angshu Dutta
- Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati - 781039, Assam, India
| | - Shankar Prasad Kanaujia
- Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati - 781039, Assam, India.
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17
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Zhang J, Li H, Zhao X, Wu Q, Huang SY. Holo Protein Conformation Generation from Apo Structures by Ligand Binding Site Refinement. J Chem Inf Model 2022; 62:5806-5820. [PMID: 36342197 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.2c00895] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/09/2022]
Abstract
An important part in structure-based drug design is the selection of an appropriate protein structure. It has been revealed that a holo protein structure that contains a well-defined binding site is a much better choice than an apo structure in structure-based drug discovery. Therefore, it is valuable to obtain a holo-like protein conformation from apo structures in the case where no holo structure is available. Meeting the need, we present a robust approach to generate reliable holo-like structures from apo structures by ligand binding site refinement with restraints derived from holo templates with low homology. Our method was tested on a test set of 32 proteins from the DUD-E data set and compared with other approaches. It was shown that our method successfully refined the apo structures toward the corresponding holo conformations for 23 of 32 proteins, reducing the average all-heavy-atom RMSD of binding site residues by 0.48 Å. In addition, when evaluated against all the holo structures in the protein data bank, our method can improve the binding site RMSD for 14 of 19 cases that experience significant conformational changes. Furthermore, our refined structures also demonstrate their advantages over the apo structures in ligand binding mode predictions by both rigid docking and flexible docking and in virtual screening on the database of active and decoy ligands from the DUD-E. These results indicate that our method is effective in recovering holo-like conformations and will be valuable in structure-based drug discovery.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jinze Zhang
- School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan430074, Hubei, P. R. China
| | - Hao Li
- School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan430074, Hubei, P. R. China
| | - Xuejun Zhao
- School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan430074, Hubei, P. R. China
| | - Qilong Wu
- School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan430074, Hubei, P. R. China
| | - Sheng-You Huang
- School of Physics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan430074, Hubei, P. R. China
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18
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Che J, Jones LH. Covalent drugs targeting histidine - an unexploited opportunity? RSC Med Chem 2022; 13:1121-1126. [PMID: 36325394 PMCID: PMC9579939 DOI: 10.1039/d2md00258b] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 8.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/02/2022] [Accepted: 09/26/2022] [Indexed: 09/30/2023] Open
Abstract
Covalent drugs and chemical probes often possess pharmacological advantages over reversible binding ligands, such as enhanced potency and pharmacodynamic duration. The highly nucleophilic cysteine thiol is commonly targeted using acrylamide electrophiles, but the amino acid is rarely present in protein binding sites. Sulfonyl exchange chemistry has expanded the covalent drug discovery toolkit by enabling the rational design of irreversible inhibitors targeting tyrosine, lysine, serine and threonine. Probes containing the sulfonyl fluoride warhead have also been shown to serendipitously label histidine residues in proteins. Histidine targeting is an attractive prospect because the residue is frequently proximal to protein small molecule ligands and the imidazole side chain possesses desirable nucleophilicity. We recently reported the design of cereblon molecular glues to site-selectively modify a histidine in the thalidomide binding site using sulfonyl exchange chemistry. We believe that histidine targeting holds great promise for future covalent drug development and this Opinion highlights these opportunities.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jianwei Che
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 360 Longwood Avenue Boston MA USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School Boston MA USA
| | - Lyn H Jones
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute 360 Longwood Avenue Boston MA USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School Boston MA USA
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19
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Hu G, Ou X, Li J. Mechanistic Insight on General Protein-Binding Ability of ATP and the Impacts of Arginine Residues. J Phys Chem B 2022; 126:4647-4658. [PMID: 35713479 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jpcb.2c01478] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 11/28/2022]
Abstract
Recent experiments suggested that adenosine triphosphate (ATP) can regulate liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) of various proteins and inhibit protein aggregations at its physiological concentration, which is highly correlated with the nonspecific interactions of ATP to a wide variety of proteins. However, the mechanism underlying the general binding capability of ATP largely remains unclear. In this work, we used molecular dynamics simulation to study the binding of ATPs to three proteins with distinct net charges: TDP-43 NTD (-7 e), TAF15-RRM (0 e), HWEL (+8 e). Negatively charged ATP exhibits a strong trend to accumulate around all of these proteins. While only a fraction of the accumulated ATPs directly binds to the limited regions of the protein surface, additional ATPs indirectly bind to proteins by aggregating into ATP clusters. Hence, the proportion of the directly bound ATPs in the clusters as well as their binding regions can be adjusted in response to different proteins, which makes ATP well adapted to a variety of proteins. Moreover, our results suggest that ATP tightly binds to Arg with high affinity, and Arg dominates the direct binding of ATP. Meanwhile, Arg also affects the self-association of accumulated ATPs. The size of the ATP cluster is effectively regulated by the distribution of Arg. Considering the ubiquity of Arg in proteins, our findings are helpful to understand the general binding capability of ATP.
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Affiliation(s)
- Guorong Hu
- Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, School of Physics, Zhejiang University, Zheda Road 38, Hangzhou 310027, China
| | - Xinwen Ou
- Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, School of Physics, Zhejiang University, Zheda Road 38, Hangzhou 310027, China
| | - Jingyuan Li
- Zhejiang Province Key Laboratory of Quantum Technology and Device, School of Physics, Zhejiang University, Zheda Road 38, Hangzhou 310027, China
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20
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Batcho AA, Nwogwugwu JO, Ali M, Jabbar B, Javaid A, Fellner M. Identification and characterisation of blue light photoreceptor gene family and their expression in tomato ( Solanum lycopersicum) under cold stress. FUNCTIONAL PLANT BIOLOGY : FPB 2022; 49:647-658. [PMID: 35437142 DOI: 10.1071/fp21297] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 02/17/2021] [Accepted: 03/07/2022] [Indexed: 06/14/2023]
Abstract
The Arabidopsis thaliana L. photoreceptor genes homologues in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) genome were analysed using bioinformatic tools. The expression pattern of these genes under cold stress was also evaluated. Transcriptome analysis of the tomato sequence revealed that the photoreceptor gene family is involved in abiotic stress tolerance. They participate in various pathways and controlling multiple metabolic processes. They are structurally related to PAS, LIGHT-OXYGEN-VOLTAGE-SENSING (LOV), DNA photolyase, 5,10-methenyl tetrahydrofolate (MTHF), flavin-binding kelch F-box, GAF, PHY, Seven-bladed β-propeller and C27 domains. They also interact with flavin adenine dinucleotide (FAD), (5S)-5-methyl-2-(methylsulfanyl)-5-phenyl-3-(phenylamino)-3,5-dihydro-4H-imidazol-4-one (FNM) and Phytochromobilin (PϕB) ligands. These interactions help to create a cascade of protein phosphorylation involving in cell defence transcription or stress-regulated genes. They localisation of these gene families on tomato chromosomes appeared to be uneven. Phylogenetic tree of tomato and Arabidopsis photoreceptor gene family were classified into eight subgroups, indicating gene expression diversity. Morphological and physiological assessment revealed no dead plant after 4h of cold treatment. All the plants were found to be alive, but there were some variations in the data across different parameters. Cold stress significantly reduced the rate of photosynthesis from 10.06 to 3.16μmolm-2 s-1 , transpiration from 4.6 to 1.3mmolm-2 s-1 , and stomatal conductance from 94.6 to 25.6mmolm-2 s-1 . The cold stressed plants also had reduced height, root/shoot length, and fresh/dry biomass weight than the control plants. Relative expression analysis under cold stress revealed that after 4h, light stimulates the transcript level of Cry2 from 1.9 to 5.7 and PhyB from 0.98 to 6.9 compared to other photoreceptor genes.
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Affiliation(s)
- Agossa Anicet Batcho
- National University of Sciences, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (ENS-UNSTIM), Natitingou, Republic of Benin; and Laboratory of Growth Regulators, Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Palacký University, Šlechtitelu 27, Olomouc-Holice 783 71, Czech Republic
| | - Joy Oluchi Nwogwugwu
- Department of Forest Conservation and Protection, Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria, Ibadan, Nigeria
| | - Mohsin Ali
- Independent Researcher, House No. 280 A/1 Sector F1 Mirpur 10250, AJK, Pakistan
| | - Basit Jabbar
- Centre of Excellence in Molecular Biology, University of the Punjab Lahore, Pakistan
| | - Ayesha Javaid
- Independent Researcher, Askari 13, Rawalpandi 46604, Pakistan
| | - Martin Fellner
- Laboratory of Growth Regulators, Institute of Experimental Botany of the Czech Academy of Sciences, Palacký University, Šlechtitelu 27, Olomouc-Holice 783 71, Czech Republic
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21
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Ecker AK, Levorse DA, Victor DA, Mitcheltree MJ. Bioisostere Effects on the EPSA of Common Permeability-Limiting Groups. ACS Med Chem Lett 2022; 13:964-971. [DOI: 10.1021/acsmedchemlett.2c00114] [Citation(s) in RCA: 0] [Impact Index Per Article: 0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/15/2022] [Accepted: 05/17/2022] [Indexed: 11/28/2022] Open
Affiliation(s)
- Andrew K. Ecker
- Department of Discovery Chemistry, Merck & Co., Inc., Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5727, United States
| | - Dorothy A. Levorse
- Department of Analytical Research & Development, Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey 07065, United States
| | - Daniel A. Victor
- Department of Analytical Research & Development, Merck & Co., Inc., Rahway, New Jersey 07065, United States
| | - Matthew J. Mitcheltree
- Department of Discovery Chemistry, Merck & Co., Inc., Boston, Massachusetts 02115-5727, United States
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22
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Cruite JT, Dann GP, Che J, Donovan KA, Ferrao S, Ficarro SB, Fischer ES, Gray NS, Huerta F, Kong NR, Liu H, Marto JA, Metivier RJ, Nowak RP, Zerfas BL, Jones LH. Cereblon covalent modulation through structure-based design of histidine targeting chemical probes. RSC Chem Biol 2022; 3:1105-1110. [PMID: 36128501 PMCID: PMC9428674 DOI: 10.1039/d2cb00078d] [Citation(s) in RCA: 23] [Impact Index Per Article: 11.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 03/18/2022] [Accepted: 07/08/2022] [Indexed: 01/01/2023] Open
Abstract
Synthetic re-engineering of a surface histidine residue on cereblon using sulfonyl exchange chemistry yielded potent irreversible modulators of the E3 ubiquitin ligase complex, including a molecular glue degrader of the novel neosubstrate NTAQ1.
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Affiliation(s)
- Justin T. Cruite
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Geoffrey P. Dann
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Jianwei Che
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Katherine A. Donovan
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Cancer Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Silas Ferrao
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Scott B. Ficarro
- Department of Cancer Biology, Department of Oncologic Pathology, and Blais Proteomics Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | - Eric S. Fischer
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Cancer Biology, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Nathanael S. Gray
- Department of Chemical and Systems Biology, ChEM-H, Stanford Cancer Institute, School of Medicine, Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA
| | - Fidel Huerta
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Nikki R. Kong
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Hu Liu
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Jarrod A. Marto
- Department of Cancer Biology, Department of Oncologic Pathology, and Blais Proteomics Center, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Pathology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115, USA
| | | | - Radosław P. Nowak
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Breanna L. Zerfas
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
| | - Lyn H. Jones
- Center for Protein Degradation, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston, MA, USA
- Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
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Gutiérrez JR, Salgadoa ARM, Arias MDÁ, Vergara HSJ, Rada WR, Gómez CMM. Epigenetic Modulators as Treatment Alternative to Diverse Types of Cancer. Curr Med Chem 2021; 29:1503-1542. [PMID: 34963430 DOI: 10.2174/0929867329666211228111036] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2021] [Revised: 08/17/2021] [Accepted: 10/21/2021] [Indexed: 01/10/2023]
Abstract
DNA is packaged in rolls in an octamer of histones forming a complex of DNA and proteins called chromatin. Chromatin as a structural matrix of a chromosome and its modifications are nowadays considered relevant aspects for regulating gene expression, which has become of high interest in understanding genetic mechanisms regulating various diseases, including cancer. In various types of cancer, the main modifications are found to be DNA methylation in the CpG dinucleotide as a silencing mechanism in transcription, post-translational histone modifications such as acetylation, methylation and others that affect the chromatin structure, the ATP-dependent chromatin remodeling and miRNA-mediated gene silencing. In this review we analyze the main alterations in gene expression, the epigenetic modification patterns that cancer cells present, as well as the main modulators and inhibitors of each epigenetic mechanism and the molecular evolution of the most representative inhibitors, which have opened a promising future in the study of HAT, HDAC, non-glycoside DNMT inhibitors and domain inhibitors.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jorseth Rodelo Gutiérrez
- Organic and Biomedical Chemistry Research Group, Faculty of Basic Sciences, Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla, Colombia
| | - Arturo René Mendoza Salgadoa
- Organic and Biomedical Chemistry Research Group, Faculty of Basic Sciences, Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla, Colombia
| | - Marcio De Ávila Arias
- Department of Medicine, Biotechnology Research Group, Health Sciences Division, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia
| | - Homero San- Juan- Vergara
- Department of Medicine, Biotechnology Research Group, Health Sciences Division, Universidad del Norte, Barranquilla, Colombia
| | - Wendy Rosales Rada
- Advanced Biomedicine Research Group. Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences, Universidad Libre Seccional, Barranquilla, Colombia
- Advanced Biomedicine Research Group. Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences, Universidad Libre Seccional, Barranquilla, Colombia
| | - Carlos Mario Meléndez Gómez
- Organic and Biomedical Chemistry Research Group, Faculty of Basic Sciences, Universidad del Atlántico, Barranquilla, Colombia
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Castelli M, Serapian SA, Marchetti F, Triveri A, Pirota V, Torielli L, Collina S, Doria F, Freccero M, Colombo G. New perspectives in cancer drug development: computational advances with an eye to design. RSC Med Chem 2021; 12:1491-1502. [PMID: 34671733 PMCID: PMC8459323 DOI: 10.1039/d1md00192b] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 06/09/2021] [Accepted: 07/06/2021] [Indexed: 02/06/2023] Open
Abstract
Computational chemistry has come of age in drug discovery. Indeed, most pharmaceutical development programs rely on computer-based data and results at some point. Herein, we discuss recent applications of advanced simulation techniques to difficult challenges in drug discovery. These entail the characterization of allosteric mechanisms and the identification of allosteric sites or cryptic pockets determined by protein motions, which are not immediately evident in the experimental structure of the target; the study of ligand binding mechanisms and their kinetic profiles; and the evaluation of drug-target affinities. We analyze different approaches to tackle challenging and emerging biological targets. Finally, we discuss the possible perspectives of future application of computation in drug discovery.
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Affiliation(s)
- Matteo Castelli
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Stefano A Serapian
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Filippo Marchetti
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Alice Triveri
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Valentina Pirota
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Luca Torielli
- Department of Drug Sciences, Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology Section, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Simona Collina
- Department of Drug Sciences, Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmaceutical Technology Section, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Filippo Doria
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Mauro Freccero
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
| | - Giorgio Colombo
- Department of Chemistry, University of Pavia via Taramelli 12 27100 Pavia Italy
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25
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Oh KK, Adnan M, Cho DH. A network pharmacology analysis on drug-like compounds from Ganoderma lucidum for alleviation of atherosclerosis. J Food Biochem 2021; 45:e13906. [PMID: 34409623 DOI: 10.1111/jfbc.13906] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/01/2021] [Revised: 07/26/2021] [Accepted: 08/05/2021] [Indexed: 12/15/2022]
Abstract
Ganoderma lucidum (GL) is known as a potent alleviator against chronic inflammatory disease like atherosclerosis (AS), but its mechanisms against AS have not been unveiled. This research aimed to identify the key compounds(s) and mechanism(s) of GL against AS through network pharmacology. The compounds from GL were identified by gas chromatography-mass spectrum (GC-MS), and SwissADME screened their physicochemical properties. Then, the target(s) associated with the screened compound(s) or AS related targets were identified by public databases, and we selected the overlapping targets using a Venn diagram. The networks between overlapping targets and compounds were visualized, constructed, and analyzed by RStudio. Finally, we performed a molecular docking test (MDT) to explore key target(s), compound(s), on AutoDockVina. A total of 35 compounds in GL were detected via GC-MS, and 34 compounds (accepted by Lipinski's rule) were selected as drug-like compounds (DLCs). A total of 34 compounds were connected to the number of 785 targets, and DisGeNET and Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) identified 2,606 AS-related targets. The final 98 overlapping targets were extracted between the compounds-targets and AS-related targets. On Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment, the number of 27 signaling pathways were sorted out, and a hub signaling pathway (MAPK signaling pathway), a core gene (PRKCA), and a key compound (Benzamide, 4-acetyl-N-[2,6-dimethylphenyl]) were selected among the 27 signaling pathways via MDT. Overall, we found that the identified 3 DLCs from GL have potent anti-inflammatory efficacy, improving AS by inactivating the MAPK signaling pathway. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS: Ganoderma lucidum (GL) has been used as a medicinal or edible mushroom for chronic inflammatory patients: diabetes mellitus and dyslipidemia, especially atherosclerosis (AS). Until now, the majority of mushroom research has been implemented regarding β-glucan derivatives with very hydrophilic physicochemical properties. It implies that β-glucan or its derivatives have poor bioavailability. Hence, we have involved GC-MS in identifying lipophilic compounds from GL, which filtered them in silico to sort drug-like compounds (DLCs). Then, we retrieved targets associated with the DLCs, and identified a key signaling pathway, key targets, and key compounds against AS. In this paper, we utilized bioinformatics and network pharmacology theory to understand the uncovered pharmacological mechanism of GL on AS. To sum things up, our analysis elucidates the relationships between signaling pathways, targets, and compounds in GL. Ultimately, this work provides biochemical evidence to identify the therapeutic effect of GL on AS, and a scientific basis for deciphering the key mechanism on DLCs of GL against AS.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ki Kwang Oh
- Department of Bio-Health Convergence, College of Biomedical Science, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea
| | - Md Adnan
- Department of Bio-Health Convergence, College of Biomedical Science, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea
| | - Dong Ha Cho
- Department of Bio-Health Convergence, College of Biomedical Science, Kangwon National University, Chuncheon, Korea
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26
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Guterres H, Park SJ, Jiang W, Im W. Ligand-Binding-Site Refinement to Generate Reliable Holo Protein Structure Conformations from Apo Structures. J Chem Inf Model 2020; 61:535-546. [PMID: 33337877 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.0c01354] [Citation(s) in RCA: 17] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/31/2022]
Abstract
The first important step in a structure-based virtual screening is the judicious selection of a receptor protein. In cases where the holo protein receptor structure is unavailable, significant reduction in virtual screening performance has been reported. In this work, we present a robust method to generate reliable holo protein structure conformations from apo structures using molecular dynamics (MD) simulation with restraints derived from holo structure binding-site templates. We perform benchmark tests on two different datasets: 40 structures from a directory of useful decoy-enhanced (DUD-E) and 84 structures from the Gunasekaran dataset. Our results show successful refinement of apo binding-site structures toward holo conformations in 82% of the test cases. In addition, virtual screening performance of 40 DUD-E structures is significantly improved using our MD-refined structures as receptors with an average enrichment factor (EF), an EF1% value of 6.2 compared to apo structures with 3.5. Docking of native ligands to the refined structures shows an average ligand root mean square deviation (RMSD) of 1.97 Å (DUD-E dataset and Gunasekaran dataset) relative to ligands in the holo crystal structures, which is comparable to the self-docking (i.e., docking of the native ligand back to its crystal structure receptor) average, 1.34 Å (DUD-E dataset) and 1.36 Å (Gunasekaran dataset). On the other hand, docking to the apo structures yields an average ligand RMSD of 3.65 Å (DUD-E) and 2.90 Å (Gunasekaran). These results indicate that our method is robust and can be useful to improve virtual screening performance of apo structures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugo Guterres
- Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Bioengineering, and Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015, United States
| | - Sang-Jun Park
- Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Bioengineering, and Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015, United States
| | - Wei Jiang
- Computational Science Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439, United States
| | - Wonpil Im
- Departments of Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Bioengineering, and Computer Science and Engineering, Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania 18015, United States
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27
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Losytskyy M, Chornenka N, Vakarov S, Meier-Menches SM, Gerner C, Potocki S, Arion VB, Gumienna-Kontecka E, Voloshin Y, Kovalska V. Sensing of Proteins by ICD Response of Iron(II) Clathrochelates Functionalized by Carboxyalkylsulfide Groups. Biomolecules 2020; 10:E1602. [PMID: 33256144 PMCID: PMC7759900 DOI: 10.3390/biom10121602] [Citation(s) in RCA: 9] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 10/06/2020] [Revised: 11/21/2020] [Accepted: 11/24/2020] [Indexed: 01/19/2023] Open
Abstract
Recognition of elements of protein tertiary structure is crucial for biotechnological and biomedical tasks; this makes the development of optical sensors for certain protein surface elements important. Herein, we demonstrated the ability of iron(II) clathrochelates (1-3) functionalized with mono-, di- and hexa-carboxyalkylsulfide to induce selective circular dichroism (CD) response upon binding to globular proteins. Thus, inherently CD-silent clathrochelates revealed selective inducing of CD spectra when binding to human serum albumin (HSA) (1, 2), beta-lactoglobuline (2) and bovine serum albumin (BSA) (3). Hence, functionalization of iron(II) clathrochelates with the carboxyalkylsulfide group appears to be a promising tool for the design of CD-probes sensitive to certain surface elements of proteins tertiary structure. Additionally, interaction of 1-3 with proteins was also studied by isothermal titration calorimetry, protein fluorescence quenching, electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) and computer simulations. Formation of both 1:1 and 1:2 assemblies of HSA with 1-3 was evidenced by ESI-MS. A protein fluorescence quenching study suggests that 3 binds with both BSA and HSA via the sites close to Trp residues. Molecular docking calculations indicate that for both BSA and HSA, binding of 3 to Site I and to an "additional site" is more favorable energetically than binding to Site II.
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Affiliation(s)
- Mykhaylo Losytskyy
- Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics NASU, 150 Zabolotnogo St., 03143 Kyiv, Ukraine;
| | - Nina Chornenka
- Vernadsky Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry NASU, 32/34 Palladina Av., 03142 Kyiv, Ukraine; (N.C.); (S.V.)
| | - Serhii Vakarov
- Vernadsky Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry NASU, 32/34 Palladina Av., 03142 Kyiv, Ukraine; (N.C.); (S.V.)
| | - Samuel M. Meier-Menches
- Department of Analytical Chemistry, University of Vienna, Währinger Strasse, 38, A-1090 Vienna, Austria; (S.M.M.-M.); (C.G.)
| | - Christopher Gerner
- Department of Analytical Chemistry, University of Vienna, Währinger Strasse, 38, A-1090 Vienna, Austria; (S.M.M.-M.); (C.G.)
| | - Slawomir Potocki
- Faculty of Chemistry, University of Wroclaw, 14 F. Joliot-Curie St., 50-383 Wroclaw, Poland; (S.P.); (E.G.-K.)
| | - Vladimir B. Arion
- Department of Inorganic Chemistry, University of Vienna, Währinger Strasse, 42, A-1090 Vienna, Austria;
| | - Elzbieta Gumienna-Kontecka
- Faculty of Chemistry, University of Wroclaw, 14 F. Joliot-Curie St., 50-383 Wroclaw, Poland; (S.P.); (E.G.-K.)
| | - Yan Voloshin
- Nesmeyanov Institute of Organoelement Compounds RAS, 28 Vavilova St., 119991 Moscow, Russia;
- Kurnakov Institute of General and Inorganic Chemistry RAS, 31 Leninsky prosp., 119991 Moscow, Russia
| | - Vladyslava Kovalska
- Institute of Molecular Biology and Genetics NASU, 150 Zabolotnogo St., 03143 Kyiv, Ukraine;
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28
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Furqan T, Batool S, Habib R, Shah M, Kalasz H, Darvas F, Kuca K, Nepovimova E, Batool S, Nurulain SM. Cannabis Constituents and Acetylcholinesterase Interaction: Molecular Docking, In Vitro Studies and Association with CNR1 rs 806368 and ACHE rs17228602. Biomolecules 2020; 10:biom10050758. [PMID: 32414087 PMCID: PMC7277636 DOI: 10.3390/biom10050758] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 04/18/2020] [Revised: 05/07/2020] [Accepted: 05/09/2020] [Indexed: 12/20/2022] Open
Abstract
The study documented here was aimed to find the molecular interactions of some of the cannabinoid constituents of cannabis with acetylcholinesterase (AChE). Molecular docking and LogP determination were performed to predict the AChE inhibitory effect and lipophilicity. AChE enzyme activity was measured in the blood of cannabis addicted human subjects. Further, genetic predisposition to cannabis addiction was investigated by association analysis of cannabinoid receptor 1 (CNR1) single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs806368 and ACHE rs17228602 using restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) method. All the understudied cannabis constituents showed promising binding affinities with AChE and are lipophilic in nature. The AChE activity was observed to be indifferent in cannabis addicted and non-addicted healthy controls. There was no significant association with CNR1 SNP rs806368 and ACHE rs17228602. The study concludes that in silico prediction for individual biomolecules of cannabis is different from in vivo physiological action in human subjects when all are present together. However, for a deeper mechanistic insight into these interactions and association, multi-population studies are suggested. Further studies to explore the inhibitory potential of different cannabis constituents for intended AChE inhibitor-based drug are warranted.
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Affiliation(s)
- Tiyyaba Furqan
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan; (T.F.); (R.H.); (M.S.); (S.B.)
| | - Sidra Batool
- Department of Biosciences, Bioinformatics laboratory, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan;
| | - Rabia Habib
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan; (T.F.); (R.H.); (M.S.); (S.B.)
| | - Mamoona Shah
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan; (T.F.); (R.H.); (M.S.); (S.B.)
| | - Huba Kalasz
- Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy, Semmelweis University, 1089 Budapest, Hungary;
| | | | - Kamil Kuca
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Kralove, 50003 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic;
- Correspondence: (K.K.); (S.M.N.)
| | - Eugenie Nepovimova
- Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science, University of Hradec Kralove, 50003 Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic;
| | - Sajida Batool
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan; (T.F.); (R.H.); (M.S.); (S.B.)
| | - Syed M Nurulain
- Department of Biosciences, COMSATS University Islamabad, Islamabad 45550, Pakistan; (T.F.); (R.H.); (M.S.); (S.B.)
- Correspondence: (K.K.); (S.M.N.)
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29
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Shi W, Lemoine JM, Shawky AEMA, Singha M, Pu L, Yang S, Ramanujam J, Brylinski M. BionoiNet: ligand-binding site classification with off-the-shelf deep neural network. Bioinformatics 2020; 36:3077-3083. [PMID: 32053156 DOI: 10.1093/bioinformatics/btaa094] [Citation(s) in RCA: 6] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/04/2019] [Revised: 01/27/2020] [Accepted: 02/05/2020] [Indexed: 01/08/2023] Open
Abstract
MOTIVATION Fast and accurate classification of ligand-binding sites in proteins with respect to the class of binding molecules is invaluable not only to the automatic functional annotation of large datasets of protein structures but also to projects in protein evolution, protein engineering and drug development. Deep learning techniques, which have already been successfully applied to address challenging problems across various fields, are inherently suitable to classify ligand-binding pockets. Our goal is to demonstrate that off-the-shelf deep learning models can be employed with minimum development effort to recognize nucleotide- and heme-binding sites with a comparable accuracy to highly specialized, voxel-based methods. RESULTS We developed BionoiNet, a new deep learning-based framework implementing a popular ResNet model for image classification. BionoiNet first transforms the molecular structures of ligand-binding sites to 2D Voronoi diagrams, which are then used as the input to a pretrained convolutional neural network classifier. The ResNet model generalizes well to unseen data achieving the accuracy of 85.6% for nucleotide- and 91.3% for heme-binding pockets. BionoiNet also computes significance scores of pocket atoms, called BionoiScores, to provide meaningful insights into their interactions with ligand molecules. BionoiNet is a lightweight alternative to computationally expensive 3D architectures. AVAILABILITY AND IMPLEMENTATION BionoiNet is implemented in Python with the source code freely available at: https://github.com/CSBG-LSU/BionoiNet. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.
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Affiliation(s)
- Wentao Shi
- Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
| | - Jeffrey M Lemoine
- Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
| | - Abd-El-Monsif A Shawky
- Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.,Department of Cell Biology, National Research Centre, 12622 Giza, Egypt
| | - Manali Singha
- Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
| | - Limeng Pu
- Center for Computation & Technology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
| | - Shuangyan Yang
- Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
| | - J Ramanujam
- Division of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.,Center for Computation & Technology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
| | - Michal Brylinski
- Department of Biological Sciences, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA.,Center for Computation & Technology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803, USA
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30
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Katigbak J, Li H, Rooklin D, Zhang Y. AlphaSpace 2.0: Representing Concave Biomolecular Surfaces Using β-Clusters. J Chem Inf Model 2020; 60:1494-1508. [PMID: 31995373 PMCID: PMC7093224 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.9b00652] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/26/2022]
Abstract
Modern rational modulator design and structure-function characterization often concentrate on concave regions of biomolecular surfaces, ranging from well-defined small-molecule binding sites to large protein-protein interaction interfaces. Here, we introduce a β-cluster as a pseudomolecular representation of fragment-centric pockets detected by AlphaSpace [J. Chem. Inf. Model. 2015, 55, 1585], a recently developed computational analysis tool for topographical mapping of biomolecular concavities. By mimicking the shape as well as atomic details of potential molecular binders, this new β-cluster representation allows direct pocket-to-ligand shape comparison and can be used to guide ligand optimization. Furthermore, we defined the β-score, the optimal Vina score of the β-cluster, as an indicator of pocket ligandability and developed an ensemble β-cluster approach, which allows one-to-one pocket mapping and comparison among aligned protein structures. We demonstrated the utility of β-cluster representation by applying the approach to a wide variety of problems including binding site detection and comparison, characterization of protein-protein interactions, and fragment-based ligand optimization. These new β-cluster functionalities have been implemented in AlphaSpace 2.0, which is freely available on the web at http://www.nyu.edu/projects/yzhang/AlphaSpace2.
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Affiliation(s)
- Joseph Katigbak
- Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, New York 10003, United States
| | - Haotian Li
- Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, New York 10003, United States
| | - David Rooklin
- Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, New York 10003, United States
| | - Yingkai Zhang
- Department of Chemistry, New York University, New York, New York 10003, United States
- NYU-ECNU Center for Computational Chemistry at NYU Shanghai, Shanghai 200062, China
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31
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Jones LH, Kelly JW. Structure-based design and analysis of SuFEx chemical probes. RSC Med Chem 2020; 11:10-17. [PMID: 33479601 DOI: 10.1039/c9md00542k] [Citation(s) in RCA: 74] [Impact Index Per Article: 18.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/19/2019] [Accepted: 12/16/2019] [Indexed: 12/11/2022] Open
Abstract
The discerning reactivity of sulfur(vi)-fluoride exchange (SuFEx) chemistry has enabled the context-specific labeling of protein binding sites by chemical probes that incorporate these versatile warheads. Emerging information from protein-probe structures and proteomic mapping experiments is helping advance our understanding of the protein microenvironment that dictates the reactivity of targetable amino acid residues. This review explores these new findings that should influence the future rational design of SuFEx probes for a multitude of applications in chemical biology and drug discovery.
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Affiliation(s)
- Lyn H Jones
- Center for Protein Degradation , Dana-Farber Cancer Institute , 360 Longwood Avenue , Boston , MA 02215 , USA .
| | - Jeffery W Kelly
- Departments of Chemistry and Molecular Medicine , The Scripps Research Institute , La Jolla , CA , USA
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32
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Guterres H, Lee HS, Im W. Ligand-Binding-Site Structure Refinement Using Molecular Dynamics with Restraints Derived from Predicted Binding Site Templates. J Chem Theory Comput 2019; 15:6524-6535. [PMID: 31557013 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jctc.9b00751] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/18/2022]
Abstract
Accurate modeling of ligand-binding-site structures plays a critical role in structure-based virtual screening. However, the structures of the ligand-binding site in most predicted protein models are generally of low quality and need refinements. In this work, we present a ligand-binding-site structure refinement protocol using molecular dynamics simulation with restraints derived from predicted binding site templates. Our benchmark validation shows great performance for 40 diverse sets of proteins from the Astex list. The ligand-binding sites on modeled protein structures are consistently refined using our method with an average Cα RMSD improvement of 0.90 Å. Comparison of ligand binding modes from ligand docking to initial unrefined and refined structures shows an average of 1.97 Å RMSD improvement in the refined structures. These results demonstrate a promising new method of structure refinement for protein ligand-binding-site structures.
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Affiliation(s)
- Hugo Guterres
- Department of Biological Sciences , Lehigh University , Bethlehem , Pennsylvania 18015 , United States
| | - Hui Sun Lee
- Department of Biological Sciences , Lehigh University , Bethlehem , Pennsylvania 18015 , United States
| | - Wonpil Im
- Department of Biological Sciences , Lehigh University , Bethlehem , Pennsylvania 18015 , United States.,School of Computational Sciences , Korea Institute for Advanced Study , Seoul 02455 , Republic of Korea
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33
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Flores-Holguín N, Frau J, Glossman-Mitnik D. Calculation of the Global and Local Conceptual DFT Indices for the Prediction of the Chemical Reactivity Properties of Papuamides A-F Marine Drugs. Molecules 2019; 24:E3312. [PMID: 31514433 PMCID: PMC6767314 DOI: 10.3390/molecules24183312] [Citation(s) in RCA: 8] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/08/2019] [Revised: 09/05/2019] [Accepted: 09/07/2019] [Indexed: 12/28/2022] Open
Abstract
A well-behaved model chemistry previously validated for the study of the chemical reactivity of peptides was considered for the calculation of the molecular properties and structures of the Papuamide family of marine peptides. A methodology based on Conceptual Density Functional Theory (CDFT) was chosen for the determination of the reactivity descriptors. The molecular active sites were associated with the active regions of the molecules related to the nucleophilic and electrophilic Parr functions. Finally, the drug-likenesses and the bioactivity scores for the Papuamide peptides were predicted through a homology methodology relating them with the calculated reactivity descriptors, while other properties such as the pKas were determined following a methodology developed by our group.
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Affiliation(s)
- Norma Flores-Holguín
- Laboratorio Virtual NANOCOSMOS, Departamento de Medio Ambiente y Energía, Centro de Investigación en Materiales Avanzados, Miguel de Cervantes 120, Complejo Industrial Chihuahua, Chihuahua 31136, Mexico.
| | - Juan Frau
- Departament de Química, Universitat de les Illes Balears, 07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
| | - Daniel Glossman-Mitnik
- Laboratorio Virtual NANOCOSMOS, Departamento de Medio Ambiente y Energía, Centro de Investigación en Materiales Avanzados, Miguel de Cervantes 120, Complejo Industrial Chihuahua, Chihuahua 31136, Mexico.
- Departament de Química, Universitat de les Illes Balears, 07122 Palma de Mallorca, Spain.
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34
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Poth AG, Huang YH, Le TT, Kan MW, Craik DJ. Pharmacokinetic characterization of kalata B1 and related therapeutics built on the cyclotide scaffold. Int J Pharm 2019; 565:437-446. [DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpharm.2019.05.001] [Citation(s) in RCA: 10] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 01/31/2019] [Revised: 04/24/2019] [Accepted: 05/03/2019] [Indexed: 02/08/2023]
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35
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Chatterjee D, Kaur G, Muradia S, Singh B, Agrewala JN. ImmtorLig_DB: repertoire of virtually screened small molecules against immune receptors to bolster host immunity. Sci Rep 2019; 9:3092. [PMID: 30816123 PMCID: PMC6395627 DOI: 10.1038/s41598-018-36179-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 08/01/2018] [Accepted: 11/15/2018] [Indexed: 10/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Host directed therapies to boost immunity against infection are gaining considerable impetus following the observation that use of antibiotics has become a continuous source for the emergence of drug resistant strains of pathogens. Receptors expressed by the cells of immune system play a cardinal role in initiating sequence of events necessary to ameliorate many morbid conditions. Although, ligands for the immune receptors are available; but their use is limited due to complex structure, synthesis and cost-effectiveness. Virtual screening (VS) is an integral part of chemoinformatics and computer-aided drug design (CADD) and aims to streamline the process of drug discovery. ImmtorLig_DB is a repertoire of 5000 novel small molecules, screened from ZINC database and ranked using structure based virtual screening (SBVS) against 25 immune receptors which play a pivotal role in defending and initiating the activation of immune system. Consequently, in the current study, small molecules were screened by docking on the essential domains present on the receptors expressed by cells of immune system. The screened molecules exhibited efficacious binding to immune receptors, and indicated a possibility of discovering novel small molecules. Other features of ImmtorLig_DB include information about availability, clustering analysis, and estimation of absorption, distribution, metabolism, and excretion (ADME) properties of the screened small molecules. Structural comparisons indicate that predicted small molecules may be considered novel. Further, this repertoire is available via a searchable graphical user interface (GUI) through http://bioinfo.imtech.res.in/bvs/immtor/ .
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Affiliation(s)
| | - Gurkirat Kaur
- CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, 160036, India
| | - Shilpa Muradia
- CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, 160036, India
| | - Balvinder Singh
- CSIR-Institute of Microbial Technology, Chandigarh, 160036, India.
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36
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Ruvinsky AM, Aloni I, Cappel D, Higgs C, Marshall K, Rotkiewicz P, Repasky M, Feher VA, Feyfant E, Hessler G, Matter H. The Role of Bridging Water and Hydrogen Bonding as Key Determinants of Noncovalent Protein-Carbohydrate Recognition. ChemMedChem 2018; 13:2684-2693. [DOI: 10.1002/cmdc.201800437] [Citation(s) in RCA: 4] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/02/2018] [Revised: 09/21/2018] [Indexed: 11/08/2022]
Affiliation(s)
| | - Ishita Aloni
- Schrödinger, Inc.; 120 West 45th Street New York NY 10036 USA
| | | | - Chris Higgs
- Schrödinger, Inc.; 10201 Wateridge Circle, Suite 220 San Diego CA 92121 USA
| | - Kyle Marshall
- Schrödinger, Inc.; 101 SW Main Street Portland OR 97204 USA
| | - Piotr Rotkiewicz
- Schrödinger, Inc.; 222 Third Street, Suite 2230 Cambridge MA 02142 USA
| | - Matt Repasky
- Schrödinger, Inc.; 101 SW Main Street Portland OR 97204 USA
| | - Victoria A. Feher
- Schrödinger, Inc.; 10201 Wateridge Circle, Suite 220 San Diego CA 92121 USA
| | - Eric Feyfant
- Schrödinger, Inc.; 222 Third Street, Suite 2230 Cambridge MA 02142 USA
| | - Gerhard Hessler
- Sanofi-Aventis (Deutschland) GmbH; Integrated Drug Discovery (IDD), Synthetic Molecular Design, Building G838; Industriepark Höchst 65926 Frankfurt am Main Germany
| | - Hans Matter
- Sanofi-Aventis (Deutschland) GmbH; Integrated Drug Discovery (IDD), Synthetic Molecular Design, Building G838; Industriepark Höchst 65926 Frankfurt am Main Germany
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Krivák R, Hoksza D. P2Rank: machine learning based tool for rapid and accurate prediction of ligand binding sites from protein structure. J Cheminform 2018; 10:39. [PMID: 30109435 PMCID: PMC6091426 DOI: 10.1186/s13321-018-0285-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 177] [Impact Index Per Article: 29.5] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/12/2017] [Accepted: 06/29/2018] [Indexed: 01/29/2023] Open
Abstract
Background Ligand binding site prediction from protein structure has many applications related to elucidation of protein function and structure based drug discovery. It often represents only one step of many in complex computational drug design efforts. Although many methods have been published to date, only few of them are suitable for use in automated pipelines or for processing large datasets.
These use cases require stability and speed, which disqualifies many of the recently introduced tools that are either template based or available only as web servers. Results We present P2Rank, a stand-alone template-free tool for prediction of ligand binding sites based on machine learning. It is based on prediction of ligandability of local chemical neighbourhoods that are centered on points placed on the solvent accessible surface of a protein.
We show that P2Rank outperforms several existing tools, which include two widely used stand-alone tools (Fpocket, SiteHound), a comprehensive consensus based tool (MetaPocket 2.0), and a recent deep learning based method (DeepSite). P2Rank belongs to the fastest available tools (requires under 1 s for prediction on one protein), with additional advantage of multi-threaded implementation. Conclusions P2Rank is a new open source software package for ligand binding site prediction from protein structure. It is available as a user-friendly stand-alone command line program and a Java library. P2Rank has a lightweight installation and does not depend on other bioinformatics tools or large structural or sequence databases. Thanks to its speed and ability to make fully automated predictions, it is particularly well suited for processing large datasets or as a component of scalable structural bioinformatics pipelines. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s13321-018-0285-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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Affiliation(s)
- Radoslav Krivák
- Department of Software Engineering, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
| | - David Hoksza
- Department of Software Engineering, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic.
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Abstract
The halogen bond (X-bond) has become an important design element in chemistry, including medicinal chemistry and biomolecular engineering. Although oxygen is the most prevalent and best characterized X-bond acceptor in biomolecules, the interaction is seen with nitrogen, sulfur, and aromatic systems as well. In this study, we characterize the structure and thermodynamics of a Br···S X-bond between a 5-bromouracil base and a phosphorothioate in a model DNA junction. The single-crystal structure of the junction shows the geometry of the Br···S to be variable, while calorimetric studies show that the anionic S acceptor is comparable to or slightly more stable than the analogous O acceptor, with a -3.5 kcal/mol difference in ΔΔH25°C and -0.4 kcal/mol ΔΔG25°C (including an entropic penalty ΔΔS25°C of -10 cal/(mol K)). Thus sulfur is shown to be a favorable acceptor for bromine X-bonds, extending the application of this interaction for the design of inhibitors and biological materials.
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Affiliation(s)
- Melissa Coates Ford
- Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Colorado State University , 1870 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1870, United States
| | - Matthew Saxton
- Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Colorado State University , 1870 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1870, United States
| | - P Shing Ho
- Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology, Colorado State University , 1870 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523-1870, United States
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Protein-Protein Interaction Modulators for Epigenetic Therapies. ADVANCES IN PROTEIN CHEMISTRY AND STRUCTURAL BIOLOGY 2017; 110:65-84. [PMID: 29413000 DOI: 10.1016/bs.apcsb.2017.06.002] [Citation(s) in RCA: 18] [Impact Index Per Article: 2.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/19/2023]
Abstract
Targeting protein-protein interactions (PPIs) is becoming an attractive approach for drug discovery. This is particularly true for difficult or emerging targets, such as epitargets that may be elusive to drugs that fall into the traditional chemical space. The chemical nature of the PPIs makes attractive the use of peptides or peptidomimetics to selectively modulate such interactions. Despite the fact peptide-based drug discovery has been challenging, the use of peptides as leads compounds for drug discovery is still a valid strategy. This chapter discusses the current status of PPIs in epigenetic drug discovery. A special emphasis is made on peptides and peptide-like compounds as potential drug candidates.
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Kimura SR, Hu HP, Ruvinsky AM, Sherman W, Favia AD. Deciphering Cryptic Binding Sites on Proteins by Mixed-Solvent Molecular Dynamics. J Chem Inf Model 2017; 57:1388-1401. [PMID: 28537745 DOI: 10.1021/acs.jcim.6b00623] [Citation(s) in RCA: 55] [Impact Index Per Article: 7.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/05/2023]
Abstract
In recent years, molecular dynamics simulations of proteins in explicit mixed solvents have been applied to various problems in protein biophysics and drug discovery, including protein folding, protein surface characterization, fragment screening, allostery, and druggability assessment. In this study, we perform a systematic study on how mixtures of organic solvent probes in water can reveal cryptic ligand binding pockets that are not evident in crystal structures of apo proteins. We examine a diverse set of eight PDB proteins that show pocket opening induced by ligand binding and investigate whether solvent MD simulations on the apo structures can induce the binding site observed in the holo structures. The cosolvent simulations were found to induce conformational changes on the protein surface, which were characterized and compared with the holo structures. Analyses of the biological systems, choice of probes and concentrations, druggability of the resulting induced pockets, and application to drug discovery are discussed here.
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Affiliation(s)
- S Roy Kimura
- Schrödinger KK , 17th Fl, Marunouchi Trust Tower North, 1-8-1 Marunouchi, Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo, Japan
| | - Hai Peng Hu
- Lilly China Research and Development Center (LCRDC), Eli Lilly and Company , Building 8, 338 Jia Li Lue Road, Shanghai 201203, PR China
| | - Anatoly M Ruvinsky
- Schrödinger LLC , 222 Third Street, Suite 2230, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, United States
| | - Woody Sherman
- Schrödinger LLC , 222 Third Street, Suite 2230, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02142, United States
| | - Angelo D Favia
- Lilly China Research and Development Center (LCRDC), Eli Lilly and Company , Building 8, 338 Jia Li Lue Road, Shanghai 201203, PR China
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Peptides, Peptidomimetics, and Polypeptides from Marine Sources: A Wealth of Natural Sources for Pharmaceutical Applications. Mar Drugs 2017; 15:md15040124. [PMID: 28441741 PMCID: PMC5408270 DOI: 10.3390/md15040124] [Citation(s) in RCA: 68] [Impact Index Per Article: 9.7] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/21/2016] [Revised: 04/11/2017] [Accepted: 04/18/2017] [Indexed: 01/07/2023] Open
Abstract
Nature provides a variety of peptides that are expressed in most living species. Evolutionary pressure and natural selection have created and optimized these peptides to bind to receptors with high affinity. Hence, natural resources provide an abundant chemical space to be explored in peptide-based drug discovery. Marine peptides can be extracted by simple solvent extraction techniques. The advancement of analytical techniques has made it possible to obtain pure peptides from natural resources. Extracted peptides have been evaluated as possible therapeutic agents for a wide range of diseases, including antibacterial, antifungal, antidiabetic and anticancer activity as well as cardiovascular and neurotoxin activity. Although marine resources provide thousands of possible peptides, only a few peptides derived from marine sources have reached the pharmaceutical market. This review focuses on some of the peptides derived from marine sources in the past ten years and gives a brief review of those that are currently in clinical trials or on the market.
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Hermosilla P, Estrada J, Guallar V, Ropinski T, Vinacua A, Vazquez PP. Physics-Based Visual Characterization of Molecular Interaction Forces. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS 2017; 23:731-740. [PMID: 27875187 DOI: 10.1109/tvcg.2016.2598825] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.4] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/06/2023]
Abstract
Molecular simulations are used in many areas of biotechnology, such as drug design and enzyme engineering. Despite the development of automatic computational protocols, analysis of molecular interactions is still a major aspect where human comprehension and intuition are key to accelerate, analyze, and propose modifications to the molecule of interest. Most visualization algorithms help the users by providing an accurate depiction of the spatial arrangement: the atoms involved in inter-molecular contacts. There are few tools that provide visual information on the forces governing molecular docking. However, these tools, commonly restricted to close interaction between atoms, do not consider whole simulation paths, long-range distances and, importantly, do not provide visual cues for a quick and intuitive comprehension of the energy functions (modeling intermolecular interactions) involved. In this paper, we propose visualizations designed to enable the characterization of interaction forces by taking into account several relevant variables such as molecule-ligand distance and the energy function, which is essential to understand binding affinities. We put emphasis on mapping molecular docking paths obtained from Molecular Dynamics or Monte Carlo simulations, and provide time-dependent visualizations for different energy components and particle resolutions: atoms, groups or residues. The presented visualizations have the potential to support domain experts in a more efficient drug or enzyme design process.
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Lee M, Peterson BR. Quantification of Small Molecule-Protein Interactions using FRET between Tryptophan and the Pacific Blue Fluorophore. ACS OMEGA 2016; 1:1266-1276. [PMID: 28058293 PMCID: PMC5204206 DOI: 10.1021/acsomega.6b00356] [Citation(s) in RCA: 29] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.6] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 11/02/2016] [Accepted: 12/06/2016] [Indexed: 05/14/2023]
Abstract
We report a new method to quantify the affinity of small molecules for proteins. This method is based on Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) between endogenous tryptophan (Trp) residues and the coumarin-derived fluorophore Pacific Blue (PB). Tryptophan residues are frequently found in proteins near ligand-binding sites, making this approach potentially applicable to a wide range of systems. To improve access to PB, we developed a scalable multigram synthesis of this fluorophore, starting with inexpensive 2,3,4,5-tetrafluorobenzoic acid. This route was used to synthesize fluorescent derivatives of biotin, as well as lower affinity thiobiotin, iminobiotin, and imidazolidinethione analogues that bind the protein streptavidin. Compared with previously published FRET acceptors for tryptophan, PB proved to be superior in both sensitivity and efficiency. These unique properties of PB enabled direct quantification of dissociation constants (Kd) as well as competitive inhibition constants (Ki) in the micromolar to nanomolar range. In comparison to analogous binding studies using fluorescence polarization, fluorescence quenching, or fluorescence enhancement, affinities determined using Trp-FRET were more precise and accurate as validated using independent isothermal titration calorimetry studies. FRET between tryptophan and PB represents a new tool for the characterization of protein-ligand complexes.
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Comparing atom-based with residue-based descriptors in predicting binding site similarity: do backbone atoms matter? Future Med Chem 2016; 8:1871-1885. [PMID: 27629811 DOI: 10.4155/fmc-2016-0077] [Citation(s) in RCA: 1] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.1] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 01/30/2023] Open
Abstract
AIM We question the level of detail required in protein 3D-representation to detect site similarity which is relevant for polypharmacology prediction. RESULTS We modified the in-house program SiteAlign to replace generic pharmacophoric descriptors of cavity-lining amino acids by descriptors accounting for solvent exposure. Benchmarking the novel, atom-based, method (SiteAlign2) revealed no global improvement of performance. However, in the rare cases of no sequence or global structure similarities between the compared proteins, SiteAlign2 was more successful if backbone atoms are key determinants of ligand binding. CONCLUSION SiteAlign suits the comparison of binding sites for close or distant homologs. SiteAlign2 provides a better insight into the physical model of site similarity between nonhomologs, but at the expense of an increased sensitivity to atomic coordinates.
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45
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Jian JW, Elumalai P, Pitti T, Wu CY, Tsai KC, Chang JY, Peng HP, Yang AS. Predicting Ligand Binding Sites on Protein Surfaces by 3-Dimensional Probability Density Distributions of Interacting Atoms. PLoS One 2016; 11:e0160315. [PMID: 27513851 PMCID: PMC4981321 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0160315] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [MESH Headings] [Grants] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 12/31/2015] [Accepted: 07/18/2016] [Indexed: 11/18/2022] Open
Abstract
Predicting ligand binding sites (LBSs) on protein structures, which are obtained either from experimental or computational methods, is a useful first step in functional annotation or structure-based drug design for the protein structures. In this work, the structure-based machine learning algorithm ISMBLab-LIG was developed to predict LBSs on protein surfaces with input attributes derived from the three-dimensional probability density maps of interacting atoms, which were reconstructed on the query protein surfaces and were relatively insensitive to local conformational variations of the tentative ligand binding sites. The prediction accuracy of the ISMBLab-LIG predictors is comparable to that of the best LBS predictors benchmarked on several well-established testing datasets. More importantly, the ISMBLab-LIG algorithm has substantial tolerance to the prediction uncertainties of computationally derived protein structure models. As such, the method is particularly useful for predicting LBSs not only on experimental protein structures without known LBS templates in the database but also on computationally predicted model protein structures with structural uncertainties in the tentative ligand binding sites.
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Affiliation(s)
- Jhih-Wei Jian
- Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
- Institute of Biomedical Informatics, National Yang-Ming University, Taipei, Taiwan 11221
- Bioinformatics Program, Taiwan International Graduate Program, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
| | | | - Thejkiran Pitti
- Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
- Bioinformatics Program, Taiwan International Graduate Program, Institute of Information Science, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
- Institute of Bioinformatics and Structural Biology, National Tsing Hua University, Hsinchu, Taiwan 30013
| | - Chih Yuan Wu
- Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
| | - Keng-Chang Tsai
- Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
| | - Jeng-Yih Chang
- Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
| | - Hung-Pin Peng
- Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
| | - An-Suei Yang
- Genomics Research Center, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan 115
- * E-mail:
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Xu D, Jalal SI, Sledge GW, Meroueh SO. Small-molecule binding sites to explore protein-protein interactions in the cancer proteome. MOLECULAR BIOSYSTEMS 2016; 12:3067-87. [PMID: 27452673 DOI: 10.1039/c6mb00231e] [Citation(s) in RCA: 14] [Impact Index Per Article: 1.8] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/13/2022]
Abstract
The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) offers an unprecedented opportunity to identify small-molecule binding sites on proteins with overexpressed mRNA levels that correlate with poor survival. Here, we analyze RNA-seq and clinical data for 10 tumor types to identify genes that are both overexpressed and correlate with patient survival. Protein products of these genes were scanned for binding sites that possess shape and physicochemical properties that can accommodate small-molecule probes or therapeutic agents (druggable). These binding sites were classified as enzyme active sites (ENZ), protein-protein interaction sites (PPI), or other sites whose function is unknown (OTH). Interestingly, the overwhelming majority of binding sites were classified as OTH. We find that ENZ, PPI, and OTH binding sites often occurred on the same structure suggesting that many of these OTH cavities can be used for allosteric modulation of enzyme activity or protein-protein interactions with small molecules. We discovered several ENZ (PYCR1, QPRT, and HSPA6) and PPI (CASC5, ZBTB32, and CSAD) binding sites on proteins that have been seldom explored in cancer. We also found proteins that have been extensively studied in cancer that have not been previously explored with small molecules that harbor ENZ (PKMYT1, STEAP3, and NNMT) and PPI (HNF4A, MEF2B, and CBX2) binding sites. All binding sites were classified by the signaling pathways to which the protein that harbors them belongs using KEGG. In addition, binding sites were mapped onto structural protein-protein interaction networks to identify promising sites for drug discovery. Finally, we identify pockets that harbor missense mutations previously identified from analysis of TCGA data. The occurrence of mutations in these binding sites provides new opportunities to develop small-molecule probes to explore their function in cancer.
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Affiliation(s)
- David Xu
- Center for Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, Indiana 46202, USA
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Skånberg R, Vázquez PP, Guallar V, Ropinski T. Real-Time Molecular Visualization Supporting Diffuse Interreflections and Ambient Occlusion. IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VISUALIZATION AND COMPUTER GRAPHICS 2016; 22:718-727. [PMID: 26390480 DOI: 10.1109/tvcg.2015.2467293] [Citation(s) in RCA: 2] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 06/05/2023]
Abstract
Today molecular simulations produce complex data sets capturing the interactions of molecules in detail. Due to the complexity of this time-varying data, advanced visualization techniques are required to support its visual analysis. Current molecular visualization techniques utilize ambient occlusion as a global illumination approximation to improve spatial comprehension. Besides these shadow-like effects, interreflections are also known to improve the spatial comprehension of complex geometric structures. Unfortunately, the inherent computational complexity of interreflections would forbid interactive exploration, which is mandatory in many scenarios dealing with static and time-varying data. In this paper, we introduce a novel analytic approach for capturing interreflections of molecular structures in real-time. By exploiting the knowledge of the underlying space filling representations, we are able to reduce the required parameters and can thus apply symbolic regression to obtain an analytic expression for interreflections. We show how to obtain the data required for the symbolic regression analysis, and how to exploit our analytic solution to enhance interactive molecular visualizations.
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48
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Limongelli I, Marini S, Bellazzi R. PaPI: pseudo amino acid composition to score human protein-coding variants. BMC Bioinformatics 2015; 16:123. [PMID: 25928477 PMCID: PMC4411653 DOI: 10.1186/s12859-015-0554-8] [Citation(s) in RCA: 35] [Impact Index Per Article: 3.9] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 07/20/2014] [Accepted: 01/15/2015] [Indexed: 12/31/2022] Open
Abstract
Background High throughput sequencing technologies are able to identify the whole genomic variation of an individual. Gene-targeted and whole-exome experiments are mainly focused on coding sequence variants related to a single or multiple nucleotides. The analysis of the biological significance of this multitude of genomic variant is challenging and computational demanding. Results We present PaPI, a new machine-learning approach to classify and score human coding variants by estimating the probability to damage their protein-related function. The novelty of this approach consists in using pseudo amino acid composition through which wild and mutated protein sequences are represented in a discrete model. A machine learning classifier has been trained on a set of known deleterious and benign coding variants with the aim to score unobserved variants by taking into account hidden sequence patterns in human genome potentially leading to diseases. We show how the combination of amphiphilic pseudo amino acid composition, evolutionary conservation and homologous proteins based methods outperforms several prediction algorithms and it is also able to score complex variants such as deletions, insertions and indels. Conclusions This paper describes a machine-learning approach to predict the deleteriousness of human coding variants. A freely available web application (http://papi.unipv.it) has been developed with the presented method, able to score up to thousands variants in a single run. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12859-015-0554-8) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
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Affiliation(s)
- Ivan Limongelli
- IRCCS Policlinico S. Matteo, Pzz.le Volontari del Sangue 2, 27100, Pavia, Italy. .,Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
| | - Simone Marini
- Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
| | - Riccardo Bellazzi
- Department of Electrical, Computer and Biomedical Engineering, University of Pavia, Via Ferrata 1, 27100, Pavia, Italy.
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Krivák R, Hoksza D. Improving protein-ligand binding site prediction accuracy by classification of inner pocket points using local features. J Cheminform 2015; 7:12. [PMID: 25932051 PMCID: PMC4414931 DOI: 10.1186/s13321-015-0059-5] [Citation(s) in RCA: 36] [Impact Index Per Article: 4.0] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Abstract] [Key Words] [Track Full Text] [Download PDF] [Figures] [Journal Information] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Received: 09/29/2014] [Accepted: 02/24/2015] [Indexed: 11/10/2022] Open
Abstract
BACKGROUND Protein-ligand binding site prediction from a 3D protein structure plays a pivotal role in rational drug design and can be helpful in drug side-effects prediction or elucidation of protein function. Embedded within the binding site detection problem is the problem of pocket ranking - how to score and sort candidate pockets so that the best scored predictions correspond to true ligand binding sites. Although there exist multiple pocket detection algorithms, they mostly employ a fairly simple ranking function leading to sub-optimal prediction results. RESULTS We have developed a new pocket scoring approach (named PRANK) that prioritizes putative pockets according to their probability to bind a ligand. The method first carefully selects pocket points and labels them by physico-chemical characteristics of their local neighborhood. Random Forests classifier is subsequently applied to assign a ligandability score to each of the selected pocket point. The ligandability scores are finally merged into the resulting pocket score to be used for prioritization of the putative pockets. With the used of multiple datasets the experimental results demonstrate that the application of our method as a post-processing step greatly increases the quality of the prediction of Fpocket and ConCavity, two state of the art protein-ligand binding site prediction algorithms. CONCLUSIONS The positive experimental results show that our method can be used to improve the success rate, validity and applicability of existing protein-ligand binding site prediction tools. The method was implemented as a stand-alone program that currently contains support for Fpocket and Concavity out of the box, but is easily extendible to support other tools. PRANK is made freely available at http://siret.ms.mff.cuni.cz/prank.
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Affiliation(s)
- Radoslav Krivák
- Department of Software Engineering, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
| | - David Hoksza
- Department of Software Engineering, Charles University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
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P2RANK: Knowledge-Based Ligand Binding Site Prediction Using Aggregated Local Features. ALGORITHMS FOR COMPUTATIONAL BIOLOGY 2015. [DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-21233-3_4] [Citation(s) in RCA: 3] [Impact Index Per Article: 0.3] [Reference Citation Analysis] [Track Full Text] [Subscribe] [Scholar Register] [Indexed: 12/12/2022]
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