Molecular Recognition of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Glycoprotein: Quantum Chemical Hot Spot and Epitope Analyses

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers have attempted to identify complex structures of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) spike glycoprotein (S-protein) with angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) or a blocking antibody. However, the molecular recognition mechanism - critical information for drug and antibody design - has not been fully clarified at the amino acid residue level. Elucidating such a microscopic mechanism in detail requires a more accurate molecular interpretation that includes quantum mechanics to quantitatively evaluate hydrogen bonds, XH/π interactions (X = N, O, and C), and salt bridges. In this study, we applied the fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method to characterize the SARS-CoV-2 S-protein binding interactions with not only ACE2 but also the B38 Fab antibody involved in ACE2-inhibitory binding. By analyzing FMO-based interaction energies along a wide range of binding inter-faces carefully, we identified amino acid residues critical for molecular recognition between S-protein and ACE2 or B38 Fab antibody. Importantly, hydrophobic residues that attribute to weak interactions such as CH-O and XH/π interactions, as well as polar residues that construct conspicuous hydrogen bonds, play important roles in molecular recognition and binding ability. Moreover, through these FMO-based analyses, we also clarified novel hot spots and epitopes that had been overlooked in previous studies by structural and molecular mechanical approaches. Altogether, these hot spots/epitopes identified between S-protein and ACE2/B38 Fab antibody may provide useful information for future anti-body design and small or medium drug design against the SARS-CoV-2. </div

Intermolecular Interaction Analyses on SARS-CoV-2 Receptor Binding Domain and Human Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 Receptor-Blocking Antibody/peptide Using Fragment Molecular Orbital Calculation

The spike glycoprotein (S-protein) mediates SARS-CoV-2 entry via intermolecular interaction with human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (hACE2). The receptor-binding domain (RBD) of the S-protein has been considered critical for this interaction and acts as the target of numerous neutralizing antibodies and antiviral peptides. This study used the fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method to analyze the interactions between RBD and antibodies/peptides and extracted crucial residues that can be used to epitopes. The interactions evaluated as inter-fragment interaction energy (IFIE) values between the RBD and 12 antibodies/peptides showed a fairly good correlation with the experimental activity pIC50 (R2 = 0.540). Nine residues (T415, K417, Y421, F456, A475, F486, N487, N501, and Y505) were confirmed as crucial. Pair interaction energy decomposition analyses (PIEDA) showed that hydrogen bonds, electrostatic interactions, and π-orbital interactions are important. Our results provide essential information for understanding SARS-CoV-2-antibodies/peptide binding and may play roles in future antibody/antiviral drug design. </p

Towards good correlation between fragment molecular orbital interaction energies and experimental IC50 for ligand binding: A case study of p38 MAP kinase

We describe several procedures for the preprocessing of fragment molecular orbital (FMO) calculations on p38 mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase and discuss the influence of the procedures on the protein–ligand interaction energies represented by inter-fragment interaction energies (IFIEs). The correlation between the summation of IFIEs for a ligand and amino acid residues of protein (IFIE-sum) and experimental affinity values (IC50) was poor when considered for the whole set of protein–ligand complexes. To improve the correlation for prediction of ligand binding affinity, we carefully classified data set by the ligand charge, the DFG-loop state (DFG-in/out loop), which is characteristic of kinase, and the scaffold of ligand. The correlation between IFIE-sums and the activity values was examined using the classified data set. As a result, it was confirmed that there was a selected data set that showed good correlation between IFIE-sum and activity value by appropriate classification. In addition, we found that the differences in protonation and hydrogen orientation caused by subtle differences in preprocessing led to a relatively large difference in IFIE values. Further, we also examined the effect of structure optimization with different force fields. It was confirmed that the difference in the force field had no significant effect on IFIE-sum. From the viewpoint of drug design using FMO calculations, various investigations on IFIE-sum in this research, such as those regarding several classifications of data set and the different procedures of structural preparation, would be expected to provide useful knowledge for improvement of prediction ability about the ligand binding affinity. Keywords: Ab initio calculation, FMO method, p38 MAP kinase, Ligand binding affinity, In silico screenin

FMOe: Preprocessing and visualizing package of the fragment molecular orbital method for Molecular Operating Environment and its applications in covalent ligand and metalloprotein analyses

The fragment molecular orbital (FMO) method is an efficient quantum chemical calculation technique for large biomolecules, dividing each into smaller fragments and providing inter-fragment interaction energies (IFIEs) that support our understanding of molecular recognition. The ab initio fragment MO method program (ABINIT-MP), an FMO processing software, can automatically divide typical proteins and nucleic acids. In contrast, small molecules such as ligands and hetero systems must be manually divided. Thus, we developed a graphical user interface to easily handle such manual fragmentation as a library for Molecular Operating Environment (MOE) that preprocesses and visualizes FMO calculations. We demonstrated fragmentation with IFIE analyses for the two following cases: 1) covalent cysteine–ligand bonding inside the SARS-CoV-2 main protease (Mpro) and nirmatrelvir (Paxlovid) complex, and 2) the metal coordination inside a zinc-bound cyclic peptide. IFIE analysis successfully identified the key amino acid residues for the molecular recognition of nirmatrelrvir with Mpro and the details of their interactions (e.g., hydrogen bonds and CH/π interactions) via ligand fragmentation of functional group units. In metalloproteins, we found an efficient and accurate scheme for the fragmentation of Zn2+ ions with four histidines coordinated to the ion. FMOe simplifies manual fragmentation, allowing users to experiment with various fragmentation patterns and perform in-depth IFIE analysis with high accuracy. In the future, our findings will provide valuable insight into complicated cases, such as ligand fragmentation in modality drug discovery, especially for medium-sized molecules and metalloprotein fragmentation around metals