2,856 research outputs found
Mapping Enzymatic Catalysis using the Effective Fragment Molecular Orbital Method: Towards all ab initio Biochemistry
We extend the Effective Fragment Molecular Orbital (EFMO) method to the
frozen domain approach where only the geometry of an active part is optimized,
while the many-body polarization effects are considered for the whole system.
The new approach efficiently mapped out the entire reaction path of chorismate
mutase in less than four days using 80 cores on 20 nodes, where the whole
system containing 2398 atoms is treated in the ab initio fashion without using
any force fields. The reaction path is constructed automatically with the only
assumption of defining the reaction coordinate a priori. We determine the
reaction barrier of chorismate mutase to be kcal mol for
MP2/cc-pVDZ and for MP2/cc-pVTZ in an ONIOM approach using
EFMO-RHF/6-31G(d) for the high and low layers, respectively.Comment: SI not attache
Extending fragment-based free energy calculations with library Monte Carlo simulation: Annealing in interaction space
Pre-calculated libraries of molecular fragment configurations have previously
been used as a basis for both equilibrium sampling (via "library-based Monte
Carlo") and for obtaining absolute free energies using a polymer-growth
formalism. Here, we combine the two approaches to extend the size of systems
for which free energies can be calculated. We study a series of all-atom
poly-alanine systems in a simple dielectric "solvent" and find that precise
free energies can be obtained rapidly. For instance, for 12 residues, less than
an hour of single-processor is required. The combined approach is formally
equivalent to the "annealed importance sampling" algorithm; instead of
annealing by decreasing temperature, however, interactions among fragments are
gradually added as the molecule is "grown." We discuss implications for future
binding affinity calculations in which a ligand is grown into a binding site
Novel algorithms and high-performance cloud computing enable efficient fully quantum mechanical protein-ligand scoring
Ranking the binding of small molecules to protein receptors through
physics-based computation remains challenging. Though inroads have been made
using free energy methods, these fail when the underlying classical mechanical
force fields are insufficient. In principle, a more accurate approach is
provided by quantum mechanical density functional theory (DFT) scoring, but
even with approximations, this has yet to become practical on drug
discovery-relevant timescales and resources. Here, we describe how to overcome
this barrier using algorithms for DFT calculations that scale on widely
available cloud architectures, enabling full density functional theory, without
approximations, to be applied to protein-ligand complexes with approximately
2500 atoms in tens of minutes. Applying this to a realistic example of 22
ligands binding to MCL1 reveals that density functional scoring outperforms
classical free energy perturbation theory for this system. This raises the
possibility of broadly applying fully quantum mechanical scoring to real-world
drug discovery pipelines.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl
Novel algorithms and high-performance cloud computing enable efficient fully quantum mechanical protein-ligand scoring
Ranking the binding of small molecules to protein receptors through physics-based computation remains challenging. Though inroads have been made using free energy methods, these fail when the underlying classical mechanical force fields are insufficient. In principle, a more accurate approach is provided by quantum mechanical density functional theory (DFT) scoring, but even with approximations, this has yet to become practical on drug discovery-relevant timescales and resources. Here, we describe how to overcome this barrier using algorithms for DFT calculations that scale on widely available cloud architectures, enabling full density functional theory, without approximations, to be applied to protein-ligand complexes with approximately 2500 atoms in tens of minutes. Applying this to a realistic example of 22 ligands binding to MCL1 reveals that density functional scoring outperforms classical free energy perturbation theory for this system. This raises the possibility of broadly applying fully quantum mechanical scoring to real-world drug discovery pipelines
The Effective Fragment Molecular Orbital Method for Fragments Connected by Covalent Bonds
We extend the effective fragment molecular orbital method (EFMO) into
treating fragments connected by covalent bonds. The accuracy of EFMO is
compared to FMO and conventional ab initio electronic structure methods for
polypeptides including proteins. Errors in energy for RHF and MP2 are within 2
kcal/mol for neutral polypeptides and 6 kcal/mol for charged polypeptides
similar to FMO but obtained two to five times faster. For proteins, the errors
are also within a few kcal/mol of the FMO results. We developed both the RHF
and MP2 gradient for EFMO. Compared to ab initio, the EFMO optimized structures
had an RMSD of 0.40 and 0.44 {\AA} for RHF and MP2, respectively.Comment: Revised manuscrip
Computational structureâbased drug design: Predicting target flexibility
The role of molecular modeling in drug design has experienced a significant revamp in the last decade. The increase in computational resources and molecular models, along with software developments, is finally introducing a competitive advantage in early phases of drug discovery. Medium and small companies with strong focus on computational chemistry are being created, some of them having introduced important leads in drug design pipelines. An important source for this success is the extraordinary development of faster and more efficient techniques for describing flexibility in threeâdimensional structural molecular modeling. At different levels, from docking techniques to atomistic molecular dynamics, conformational sampling between receptor and drug results in improved predictions, such as screening enrichment, discovery of transient cavities, etc. In this review article we perform an extensive analysis of these modeling techniques, dividing them into high and low throughput, and emphasizing in their application to drug design studies. We finalize the review with a section describing our Monte Carlo method, PELE, recently highlighted as an outstanding advance in an international blind competition and industrial benchmarks.We acknowledge the BSC-CRG-IRB Joint Research Program in Computational Biology. This work was supported by a grant
from the Spanish Government CTQ2016-79138-R.J.I. acknowledges support from SVP-2014-068797, awarded by the Spanish Government.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft
Ligand affinities estimated by quantum chemical calculations
We present quantum chemical estimates of ligand-binding affinities performed, for the first time, at a level of theory for which there is a hope that dispersion and polarization effects are properly accounted for (MP2/cc-pVTZ) and at the same time effects of solvation, entropy, and sampling are included. We have studied the binding of seven biotin analogues to the avidin tetramer. The calculations have been performed by the recently developed PMISP approach (polarizable multipole interactions with supermolecular pairs), which treats electrostatic interactions by multipoles up to quadrupoles, induction by anisotropic polarizabilities, and nonclassical interactions (dispersion, exchange repulsion, etc.) by explicit quantum chemical calculations, using a fragmentation approach, except for long-range interactions that are treated by standard molecular-mechanics Lennard-Jones terms. In order to include effects of sampling, 10 snapshots from a molecular dynamics simulation are studied for each biotin analogue. Solvation energies are estimated by the polarized continuum model (PCM), coupled to the multipole-polarizability model. Entropy effects are estimated from vibrational frequencies, calculated at the molecular mechanics level. We encounter several problems, not previously discussed, illustrating that we are first to apply such a method. For example, the PCM model is, in the present implementation, questionable for large molecules, owing to the use of a surface definition that gives numerous small cavities in a protein
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