1,574 research outputs found
Knowledge-based energy functions for computational studies of proteins
This chapter discusses theoretical framework and methods for developing
knowledge-based potential functions essential for protein structure prediction,
protein-protein interaction, and protein sequence design. We discuss in some
details about the Miyazawa-Jernigan contact statistical potential,
distance-dependent statistical potentials, as well as geometric statistical
potentials. We also describe a geometric model for developing both linear and
non-linear potential functions by optimization. Applications of knowledge-based
potential functions in protein-decoy discrimination, in protein-protein
interactions, and in protein design are then described. Several issues of
knowledge-based potential functions are finally discussed.Comment: 57 pages, 6 figures. To be published in a book by Springe
Empirical Potential Function for Simplified Protein Models: Combining Contact and Local Sequence-Structure Descriptors
An effective potential function is critical for protein structure prediction
and folding simulation. Simplified protein models such as those requiring only
or backbone atoms are attractive because they enable efficient
search of the conformational space. We show residue specific reduced discrete
state models can represent the backbone conformations of proteins with small
RMSD values. However, no potential functions exist that are designed for such
simplified protein models. In this study, we develop optimal potential
functions by combining contact interaction descriptors and local
sequence-structure descriptors. The form of the potential function is a
weighted linear sum of all descriptors, and the optimal weight coefficients are
obtained through optimization using both native and decoy structures. The
performance of the potential function in test of discriminating native protein
structures from decoys is evaluated using several benchmark decoy sets. Our
potential function requiring only backbone atoms or atoms have
comparable or better performance than several residue-based potential functions
that require additional coordinates of side chain centers or coordinates of all
side chain atoms. By reducing the residue alphabets down to size 5 for local
structure-sequence relationship, the performance of the potential function can
be further improved. Our results also suggest that local sequence-structure
correlation may play important role in reducing the entropic cost of protein
folding.Comment: 20 pages, 5 figures, 4 tables. In press, Protein
Potential function of simplified protein models for discriminating native proteins from decoys: Combining contact interaction and local sequence-dependent geometry
An effective potential function is critical for protein structure prediction
and folding simulation. For simplified models of proteins where coordinates of
only atoms need to be specified, an accurate potential function is
important. Such a simplified model is essential for efficient search of
conformational space. In this work, we present a formulation of potential
function for simplified representations of protein structures. It is based on
the combination of descriptors derived from residue-residue contact and
sequence-dependent local geometry. The optimal weight coefficients for contact
and local geometry is obtained through optimization by maximizing margins among
native and decoy structures. The latter are generated by chain growth and by
gapless threading. The performance of the potential function in blind test of
discriminating native protein structures from decoys is evaluated using several
benchmark decoy sets. This potential function have comparable or better
performance than several residue-based potential functions that require in
addition coordinates of side chain centers or coordinates of all side chain
atoms.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, Accepted by 26th IEEE-EMBS Conference, San
Francisc
PEPSI-Dock: a detailed data-driven protein–protein interaction potential accelerated by polar Fourier correlation
International audienceMotivation: Docking prediction algorithms aim to find the native conformation of a complex of proteins from knowledge of their unbound structures. They rely on a combination of sampling and scoring methods, adapted to different scales. Polynomial Expansion of Protein Structures and Interactions for Docking (PEPSI-Dock) improves the accuracy of the first stage of the docking pipeline , which will sharpen up the final predictions. Indeed, PEPSI-Dock benefits from the precision of a very detailed data-driven model of the binding free energy used with a global and exhaustive rigid-body search space. As well as being accurate, our computations are among the fastest by virtue of the sparse representation of the pre-computed potentials and FFT-accelerated sampling techniques. Overall, this is the first demonstration of a FFT-accelerated docking method coupled with an arbitrary-shaped distance-dependent interaction potential. Results: First, we present a novel learning process to compute data-driven distant-dependent pair-wise potentials, adapted from our previous method used for rescoring of putative protein–protein binding poses. The potential coefficients are learned by combining machine-learning techniques with physically interpretable descriptors. Then, we describe the integration of the deduced potentials into a FFT-accelerated spherical sampling provided by the Hex library. Overall, on a training set of 163 heterodimers, PEPSI-Dock achieves a success rate of 91% mid-quality predictions in the top-10 solutions. On a subset of the protein docking benchmark v5, it achieves 44.4% mid-quality predictions in the top-10 solutions when starting from bound structures and 20.5% when starting from unbound structures. The method runs in 5–15 min on a modern laptop and can easily be extended to other types of interactions. Availability and Implementation: https://team.inria.fr/nano-d/software/PEPSI-Dock. Contact: [email protected]
Resolving transition metal chemical space: feature selection for machine learning and structure-property relationships
Machine learning (ML) of quantum mechanical properties shows promise for
accelerating chemical discovery. For transition metal chemistry where accurate
calculations are computationally costly and available training data sets are
small, the molecular representation becomes a critical ingredient in ML model
predictive accuracy. We introduce a series of revised autocorrelation functions
(RACs) that encode relationships between the heuristic atomic properties (e.g.,
size, connectivity, and electronegativity) on a molecular graph. We alter the
starting point, scope, and nature of the quantities evaluated in standard ACs
to make these RACs amenable to inorganic chemistry. On an organic molecule set,
we first demonstrate superior standard AC performance to other
presently-available topological descriptors for ML model training, with mean
unsigned errors (MUEs) for atomization energies on set-aside test molecules as
low as 6 kcal/mol. For inorganic chemistry, our RACs yield 1 kcal/mol ML MUEs
on set-aside test molecules in spin-state splitting in comparison to 15-20x
higher errors from feature sets that encode whole-molecule structural
information. Systematic feature selection methods including univariate
filtering, recursive feature elimination, and direct optimization (e.g., random
forest and LASSO) are compared. Random-forest- or LASSO-selected subsets 4-5x
smaller than RAC-155 produce sub- to 1-kcal/mol spin-splitting MUEs, with good
transferability to metal-ligand bond length prediction (0.004-5 {\AA} MUE) and
redox potential on a smaller data set (0.2-0.3 eV MUE). Evaluation of feature
selection results across property sets reveals the relative importance of
local, electronic descriptors (e.g., electronegativity, atomic number) in
spin-splitting and distal, steric effects in redox potential and bond lengths.Comment: 43 double spaced pages, 11 figures, 4 table
Representability of algebraic topology for biomolecules in machine learning based scoring and virtual screening
This work introduces a number of algebraic topology approaches, such as
multicomponent persistent homology, multi-level persistent homology and
electrostatic persistence for the representation, characterization, and
description of small molecules and biomolecular complexes. Multicomponent
persistent homology retains critical chemical and biological information during
the topological simplification of biomolecular geometric complexity.
Multi-level persistent homology enables a tailored topological description of
inter- and/or intra-molecular interactions of interest. Electrostatic
persistence incorporates partial charge information into topological
invariants. These topological methods are paired with Wasserstein distance to
characterize similarities between molecules and are further integrated with a
variety of machine learning algorithms, including k-nearest neighbors, ensemble
of trees, and deep convolutional neural networks, to manifest their descriptive
and predictive powers for chemical and biological problems. Extensive numerical
experiments involving more than 4,000 protein-ligand complexes from the PDBBind
database and near 100,000 ligands and decoys in the DUD database are performed
to test respectively the scoring power and the virtual screening power of the
proposed topological approaches. It is demonstrated that the present approaches
outperform the modern machine learning based methods in protein-ligand binding
affinity predictions and ligand-decoy discrimination
Study of ligand-based virtual screening tools in computer-aided drug design
Virtual screening is a central technique in drug discovery today. Millions of molecules can be tested in silico with the aim to only select the most promising and test them experimentally. The topic of this thesis is ligand-based virtual screening tools which take existing active molecules as starting point for finding new drug candidates.
One goal of this thesis was to build a model that gives the probability that two molecules are biologically similar as function of one or more chemical similarity scores. Another important goal was to evaluate how well different ligand-based virtual screening tools are able to distinguish active molecules from inactives. One more criterion set for the virtual screening tools was their applicability in scaffold-hopping, i.e. finding new active chemotypes.
In the first part of the work, a link was defined between the abstract chemical similarity score given by a screening tool and the probability that the two molecules are biologically similar. These results help to decide objectively which virtual screening hits to test experimentally. The work also resulted in a new type of data fusion method when using two or more tools. In the second part, five ligand-based virtual screening tools were evaluated and their performance was found to be generally poor. Three reasons for this were proposed: false negatives in the benchmark sets, active molecules that do not share the binding mode, and activity cliffs. In the third part of the study, a novel visualization and quantification method is presented for evaluation of the scaffold-hopping ability of virtual screening tools.Siirretty Doriast
COMPUTATIONAL MODELLING OF PROTEIN FIBRILLATION WITH APPLICATION TO GLUCAGON
A computational method to model the steric zipper of amyloid fibrils (FibPreditor) is developed. The method generates an ensemble of structures for the steric zipper by a number of geometric operations and presents the most energetically favorable candidates as models of steric zipper. The method is shown to successfully reproduce a number of experimentally determined fibril structures
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