Relative contributions of desolvation, inter- and intramolecular interactions to binding affinity in protein kinase systems

In several previous studies, we performed sensitivity analysis to gauge the relative importance of different atomic partial charges in determining protein-ligand binding. In this work, we gain further insights by decomposing these results into three contributions: desolvation, intramolecular interactions, and intermolecular interactions, again based on a Poisson continuum electrostatics model. Three protein kinase-inhibitor systems have been analyzed: CDK2-deschloroflavopiridol, PKA-PKI, and LCK-PP2. Although our results point out the importance of specific intermolecular interactions to the binding affinity, they also reveal the remarkable contributions from the solvent-mediated intramolecular interactions in some cases. Thus, it is necessary to look beyond analyzing protein-ligand interactions to understand protein-ligand recognition or to gain insights into designing ligands and proteins. In analyzing the contributions of the three components to the overall binding free energy, the PKA-PKI system with a much larger ligand was found to behave differently from the other two systems with smaller ligands. In the former case, the intermolecular interactions are very favorable, and together with the favorable solvent-mediated intramolecular interactions, they overcome the large desolvation penalties to give a favorable electrostatics contribution to the overall binding affinity. On the other hand, the other two systems with smaller ligands only present modest intermolecular interactions and they are not or are only barely sufficient to overcome the desolvation penalty even with the aid of the favorable intramolecular contributions. As a result, the binding affinity of these two systems do not or only barely benefit from electrostatics contributions.     

The effect of water displacement on binding thermodynamics: concanavalin A

Interactions at the binding interface of biomolecular complexes are often mediated by ordered water molecules. In this work, we considered two concanavalin A-carbohydrate complexes. In the first, a water molecule is buried at the binding interface. In the second, this water molecule is displaced by a modification of the ligand (Clarke, C.; Woods, R. J.; Gluska, J.; Cooper, A.; Nutley, M. A.; Boons, G. J. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2001, 123, 12238-12247). We computed the contribution of this water molecule to the thermodynamic properties using statistical mechanical formulas for the energy and entropy and molecular dynamics simulations. Other contributions to the binding affinity, including desolvation, entropy of conformational restriction, and interaction between the ligand and protein, were also computed. The thermodynamic consequences of displacement of the ordered water molecule by ligand modification were in qualitative agreement with experimental data. The free energy contribution of the water molecule (-17.2 kcal/mol; -19.2 enthalpic and +2 entropic) was nearly equivalent to the additional protein-ligand interactions in trimannoside 2 (-18.9 kcal/mol). The two structural ions interact more strongly with the water than with the hydroxyl of trimannoside 2, thus favoring trimannoside 1. The contributions from desolvation and conformational entropy are much smaller but significant, compared to the binding free energy difference. The picture that emerges is that the final outcome of water displacement is sensitive to the details of the binding site and cannot be predicted by simple empirical rules.     

Hydration in drug design. 1. Multiple hydrogen-bonding features of water molecules in mediating protein-ligand interactions

Summary Water is known to play an important rôle in the recognition and stabilization of the interaction between a ligand and its site. This has important implications for drug design. Analyses of 19 high-resolution crystal structures of protein-ligand complexes reveal the multiple hydrogen-bonding feature of water molecules mediating protein-ligand interactions. Most of the water molecules (nearly 80%) involved in bridging the protein and the ligand can make three or more hydrogen bonds when distance and bond angles are used as criteria to define hydrogen-bonding interactions. Isotropic B-factors have been used to take into account the mobility of water molecules. The water molecules at binding sites bridge the protein and ligand, and interact with other water molecules to form a complex network of interconnecting hydrogen bonds. Some water molecules at the site do not directly bridge between the protein and the ligand, but may contribute indirectly to the stability of the complex by holding bridging water molecules in the right position through a network of hydrogen bonds. These water networks are probably crucial for the stability of the protein-ligand complex and are important for any site-directed drug design strategies.     

Molecular docking with ligand attached water molecules

A novel approach to incorporate water molecules in protein-ligand docking is proposed. In this method, the water molecules display the same flexibility during the docking simulation as the ligand. The method solvates the ligand with the maximum number of water molecules, and these are then retained or displaced depending on energy contributions during the docking simulation. Instead of being a static part of the receptor, each water molecule is a flexible on/off part of the ligand and is treated with the same flexibility as the ligand itself. To favor exclusion of the water molecules, a constant entropy penalty is added for each included water molecule. The method was evaluated using 12 structurally diverse protein-ligand complexes from the PDB, where several water molecules bridge the ligand and the protein. A considerable improvement in successful docking simulations was found when including flexible water molecules solvating hydrogen bonding groups of the ligand. The method has been implemented in the docking program Molegro Virtual Docker (MVD).     

Hydration in drug design. 2. Influence of local site surface shape on water binding

Summary If water molecules are strongly bound at a protein-ligand interface, they are unlikely to be displaced during ligand binding. Such water molecules can change the shape of the ligand binding site and thus affect strategies for drug design. To understand the nature of water binding, and factors influencing it, water molecules at the ligand binding sites of 26 high-resolution protein-ligand complexes have been examined here. Water molecules bound in deep grooves and cavities between the protein and the ligand are located in the indentations on the protein-site surface, but not in the indentations on the ligand surface. The majority of the water molecules bound in deep indentations on the protein-site surface make multiple polar contacts with the protein surface. This may indicate a strong binding of water molecules in deep indentations on protein-site surfaces. The local shape of the site surface may influence the binding of water molecules that mediate protein-ligand interactions.     

The development of a simple empirical scoring function to estimate the binding constant for a protein-ligand complex of known three-dimensional structure

Summary A new simple empirical function has been developed that estimates the free energy of binding for a given protein-ligand complex of known 3D structure. The function takes into account hydrogen bonds, ionic interactions, the lipophilic protein-ligand contact surface and the number of rotatable bonds in the ligand. The dataset for the calibration of the function consists of 45 protein-ligand complexes. The new energy function reproduces the binding constants (ranging from 2.5·10^-2 to 4·10^-14 M, corresponding to binding energies between -9 and -76 kJ/mol) of the dataset with a standard deviation of 7.9 kJ/mol, corresponding to 1.4 orders of magnitude in binding affinity. The individual contributions to protein-ligand binding obtained from the scoring function are: ideal neutral hydrogen bond: -4.7 kJ/mol; ideal ionic interaction: -8.3 kJ/mol; lipophilic contact: -0.17 kJ/mol Ų; one rotatable bond in the ligand: +1.4 kJ/mol. The function also contains a constant contribution (+5.4 kJ/mol) which may be rationalized as loss of translational and rotational entropy. The function can be evaluated very fast and is therefore also suitable for application in a 3D database search or de novo ligand design program such as LUDI.     

Involvement of water in carbohydrate-protein binding.

The interactions of trimannosides 1 and 2 with Con A were studied to reveal the effects of displacement of well-ordered water molecules on the thermodynamic parameters of protein-ligand complexation. Trisaccharide 2 is a derivative of 1, in which the hydroxyl at C-2 of the central mannose unit is replaced by a hydroxyethyl moiety. Upon binding, this moiety displaces a conserved water molecule present in the Con A binding site. Structural studies by NMR spectroscopy and MD simulations showed that the two compounds have very similar solution conformational properties. MD simulations of the complexes of Con A with 1 and 2 demonstrated that the hydroxyethyl side chain of 2 can establish the same hydrogen bonds in a low energy conformation with the protein binding site as those mediated by the water molecule in the complex of 1 with Con A. Isothermal titration microcalorimetry (ITC) measurements showed that 2 has a more favorable entropy of binding compared to 1. This term, which was expected, arises from the return of the highly ordered water molecule to bulk solution. The favorable entropy term was, however, offset by a relatively large unfavorable enthalpy term. This observation was rationalized by comparing the extent of hydrogen bond and solvation changes during binding. It is proposed that an indirect interaction through a water molecule will provide a larger number of hydrogen bonds in the complex that have higher occupancies than in bulk solution, thereby stabilizing the complex.     

Binding free energy contributions of interfacial waters in HIV-1 protease/inhibitor complexes

Water molecules are commonly observed in crystal structures of protein-ligand complexes where they mediate protein-ligand binding. It is of considerable theoretical and practical importance to determine quantitatively the individual free energy contributions of these interfacial water molecules to protein-ligand binding and to elucidate factors that influence them. The double-decoupling free energy molecular dynamics simulation method has been used to calculate the binding free energy contribution for each of the four interfacial water molecules observed in the crystal structure of HIV-1 protease complexed with KNI-272, a potent inhibitor. While two of these water molecules contribute significantly to the binding free energy, the other two have close to zero contribution. It was further observed that the protonation states of two catalytic aspartate residues, Asp25 and Asp125, strongly influence the free energy contribution of a conserved water molecule Wat301 and that different inhibitors significantly influence the free energy contribution of Wat301. Our results have important implications on our understanding of the role of interfacial water molecules in protein-ligand binding and to structure-based drug design aimed at incorporating these interfacial water molecules into ligands.     

Protein-ligand interactions: thermodynamic effects associated with increasing nonpolar surface area

Thermodynamic parameters were determined for complex formation between the Grb2 SH2 domain and Ac-pTyr-Xaa-Asn derived tripeptides in which the Xaa residue is an α,α-cycloaliphatic amino acid that varies in ring size from three- to seven-membered. Although the six- and seven-membered ring analogs are approximately equipotent, binding affinities of those having three- to six-membered rings increase incrementally with ring size because increasingly more favorable binding enthalpies dominate increasingly less favorable binding entropies, a finding consistent with an enthalpy-driven hydrophobic effect. Crystallographic analysis reveals that the only significant differences in structures of the complexes are in the number of van der Waals contacts between the domain and the methylene groups in the Xaa residues. There is a positive correlation between buried nonpolar surface area and binding free energy and enthalpy, but not with ΔC(p). Displacing a water molecule from a protein-ligand interface is not necessarily reflected in a favorable change in binding entropy. These findings highlight some of the fallibilities associated with commonly held views of relationships of structure and energetics in protein-ligand interactions and have significant implications for ligand design.     

Fluoroalkyl and alkyl chains have similar hydrophobicities in binding to the "hydrophobic wall" of carbonic anhydrase

The hydrophobic effect, the free-energetically favorable association of nonpolar solutes in water, makes a dominant contribution to binding of many systems of ligands and proteins. The objective of this study was to examine the hydrophobic effect in biomolecular recognition using two chemically different but structurally similar hydrophobic groups, aliphatic hydrocarbons and aliphatic fluorocarbons, and to determine whether the hydrophobicity of the two groups could be distinguished by thermodynamic and biostructural analysis. This paper uses isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) to examine the thermodynamics of binding of benzenesulfonamides substituted in the para position with alkyl and fluoroalkyl chains (H(2)NSO(2)C(6)H(4)-CONHCH(2)(CX(2))(n)CX(3), n = 0-4, X = H, F) to human carbonic anhydrase II (HCA II). Both alkyl and fluoroalkyl substituents contribute favorably to the enthalpy and the entropy of binding; these contributions increase as the length of chain of the hydrophobic substituent increases. Crystallography of the protein-ligand complexes indicates that the benzenesulfonamide groups of all ligands examined bind with similar geometry, that the tail groups associate with the hydrophobic wall of HCA II (which is made up of the side chains of residues Phe131, Val135, Pro202, and Leu204), and that the structure of the protein is indistinguishable for all but one of the complexes (the longest member of the fluoroalkyl series). Analysis of the thermodynamics of binding as a function of structure is compatible with the hypothesis that hydrophobic binding of both alkyl and fluoroalkyl chains to hydrophobic surface of carbonic anhydrase is due primarily to the release of nonoptimally hydrogen-bonded water molecules that hydrate the binding cavity (including the hydrophobic wall) of HCA II and to the release of water molecules that surround the hydrophobic chain of the ligands. This study defines the balance of enthalpic and entropic contributions to the hydrophobic effect in this representative system of protein and ligand: hydrophobic interactions, here, seem to comprise approximately equal contributions from enthalpy (plausibly from strengthening networks of hydrogen bonds among molecules of water) and entropy (from release of water from configurationally restricted positions).     

Ligand Identification Scoring Algorithm (LISA)

A central problem in de novo drug design is determining the binding affinity of a ligand with a receptor. A new scoring algorithm is presented that estimates the binding affinity of a protein-ligand complex given a three-dimensional structure. The method, LISA (Ligand Identification Scoring Algorithm), uses an empirical scoring function to describe the binding free energy. Interaction terms have been designed to account for van der Waals (VDW) contacts, hydrogen bonding, desolvation effects, and metal chelation to model the dissociation equilibrium constants using a linear model. Atom types have been introduced to differentiate the parameters for VDW, H-bonding interactions, and metal chelation between different atom pairs. A training set of 492 protein-ligand complexes was selected for the fitting process. Different test sets have been examined to evaluate its ability to predict experimentally measured binding affinities. By comparing with other well-known scoring functions, the results show that LISA has advantages over many existing scoring functions in simulating protein-ligand binding affinity, especially metalloprotein-ligand binding affinity. Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was also used in order to demonstrate that the energy terms in LISA are well designed and do not require extra cross terms.     

New approach to molecular docking and its application to virtual screening of chemical databases

This paper describes the validation of a molecular docking method and its application to virtual database screening. The code flexibly docks ligand molecules into rigid receptor structures using a tabu search methodology driven by an empirically derived function for estimating the binding affinity of a protein-ligand complex. The docking method has been tested on 70 ligand-receptor complexes for which the experimental binding affinity and binding geometry are known. The lowest energy geometry produced by the docking protocol is within 2.0 A root mean square of the experimental binding mode for 79% of the complexes. The method has been applied to the problem of virtual database screening to identify known ligands for thrombin, factor Xa, and the estrogen receptor. A database of 10,000 randomly chosen "druglike" molecules has been docked into the three receptor structures. In each case known receptor ligands were included in the study. The results showed good separation between the predicted binding affinities of the known ligand set and the database subset.     

A water-swap reaction coordinate for the calculation of absolute protein-ligand binding free energies

The accurate prediction of absolute protein-ligand binding free energies is one of the grand challenge problems of computational science. Binding free energy measures the strength of binding between a ligand and a protein, and an algorithm that would allow its accurate prediction would be a powerful tool for rational drug design. Here we present the development of a new method that allows for the absolute binding free energy of a protein-ligand complex to be calculated from first principles, using a single simulation. Our method involves the use of a novel reaction coordinate that swaps a ligand bound to a protein with an equivalent volume of bulk water. This water-swap reaction coordinate is built using an identity constraint, which identifies a cluster of water molecules from bulk water that occupies the same volume as the ligand in the protein active site. A dual topology algorithm is then used to swap the ligand from the active site with the identified water cluster from bulk water. The free energy is then calculated using replica exchange thermodynamic integration. This returns the free energy change of simultaneously transferring the ligand to bulk water, as an equivalent volume of bulk water is transferred back to the protein active site. This, directly, is the absolute binding free energy. It should be noted that while this reaction coordinate models the binding process directly, an accurate force field and sufficient sampling are still required to allow for the binding free energy to be predicted correctly. In this paper we present the details and development of this method, and demonstrate how the potential of mean force along the water-swap coordinate can be improved by calibrating the soft-core Coulomb and Lennard-Jones parameters used for the dual topology calculation. The optimal parameters were applied to calculations of protein-ligand binding free energies of a neuraminidase inhibitor (oseltamivir), with these results compared to experiment. These results demonstrate that the water-swap coordinate provides a viable and potentially powerful new route for the prediction of protein-ligand binding free energies.     

Hydration in drug design. 3. Conserved water molecules at the ligand-binding sites of homologous proteins

Summary Water molecules are known to play an important rôle in mediating protein-ligand interactions. If water molecules are conserved at the ligand-binding sites of homologous proteins, such a finding may suggest the structural importance of water molecules in ligand binding. Structurally conserved water molecules change the conventional definition of binding sites by changing the shape and complementarity of these sites. Such conserved water molecules can be important for site-directed ligand/drug design. Therefore, five different sets of homologous protein/protein-ligand complexes have been examined to identify the conserved water molecules at the ligand-binding sites. Our analysis reveals that there are as many as 16 conserved water molecules at the FAD binding site of glutathione reductase between the crystal structures obtained from human and E. coli. In the remaining four sets of high-resolution crystal structures, 2–4 water molecules have been found to be conserved at the ligand-binding sites. The majority of these conserved water molecules are either bound in deep grooves at the protein-ligand interface or completely buried in cavities between the protein and the ligand. All these water molecules, conserved between the protein/protein-ligand complexes from different species, have identical or similar apolar and polar interactions in a given set. The site residues interacting with the conserved water molecules at the ligand-binding sites have been found to be highly conserved among proteins from different species; they are more conserved compared to the other site residues interacting with the ligand. These water molecules, in general, make multiple polar contacts with protein-site residues.     

Pocket v.2: further developments on receptor-based pharmacophore modeling

A deriving pharmacophore model from the three-dimensional structure of a target protein provides helpful information for analyzing protein-ligand interactions and further improvement of ligand binding affinity. A standalone program, Pocket v.2, has been developed based on the original Pocket module in the de novo drug design program LigBuilder. Pocket v.2 is able to derive a pharmacophore model directly from a given protein-ligand complex structure without human intervention. Key features in the pharmacophore model are automatically reduced to a reasonable number. Pocket v.2 has been applied to several case studies, including cyclin dependent kinase 2, HIV-1 protease, estrogen receptor, and 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase. It well reproduced previously published pharmacophore models in all of these cases. One notable feature of Pocket v.2 is that it can tolerate minor conformational changes on the protein side upon binding of different ligands to give a consistent pharmacophore model. For different proteins accommodating the same ligand, Pocket v.2 gives similar pharmacophore models, which opens the possibility to classify proteins with their binding features.     

Protein ligand docking based on empirical method for binding affinity estimation

An empirical protein-ligand binding affinity estimation method, SCORE, was incorporated into a popular docking program, DOCK4. The combined program, ScoreDock, was used to reconstruct the 200 protein-ligand complex structures and found to give good results for the complexes with high binding affinities. A quality assessment method for docking results from ScoreDock was developed based on the whole test set and tested by additionally selected complexes. The method significantly improves the docking accuracy and was shown to be reliable in docking quality assessment. As a docking tool in structural based drug design, ScoreDock can screen out final hits directly based on the predicted negative logarithms of dissociation equilibrium constants of protein-ligand complexes, and can explicitly deal with structure water molecules, as well as metal atoms.     

Analysis of ligand-bound water molecules in high-resolution crystal structures of protein-ligand complexes

We have performed a comprehensive analysis of water molecules at the protein-ligand interfaces observed in 392 high-resolution crystal structures. There are a total of 1829 ligand-bound water molecules in these 392 complexes; 18% are surface water molecules, and 72% are interfacial water molecules. The number of ligand-bound water molecules in each complex structure ranges from 0 to 21 and has an average of 4.6. Of these interfacial water molecules, 76% are considered to be bridging water molecules, characterized by having polar interactions with both ligand and protein atoms. Among a number of factors that may influence the number of ligand-bound water molecules, the polar van der Waals (vdw) surface area of ligands has the highest Pearson linear correlation coefficient of 0.63. Our regression analysis predicted that one more ligand-bound water molecule is expected for every additional 24 A2 in the polar vdw surface area of the ligand. In contrast to the observation that the resolution is the primary factor influencing the number of water molecules in crystallographic models of proteins, we found that there is only a weak relationship between the number of ligand-bound water molecules and the resolution of the crystal structures. An analysis of the isotropic B factors of buried ligand-bound water molecules suggested that, when water molecules have fewer than two polar interactions with the protein-ligand complex, they are more mobile than protein atoms in the crystal structures; when they have more than three polar interactions, they are significantly less mobile than protein atoms.     

Rapid protein-ligand costructures using chemical shift perturbations

Structure-based drug discovery requires the iterative determination of protein-ligand costructures in order to improve the binding affinity and selectivity of potential drug candidates. In general, X-ray and NMR structure determination methods are time consuming and are typically the limiting factor in the drug discovery process. The application of molecular docking simulations to filter and evaluate drug candidates has become a common method to improve the throughput and efficiency of structure-based drug design. Unfortunately, molecular docking methods suffer from common problems that include ambiguous ligand conformers or failure to predict the correct docked structure. A rapid approach to determine accurate protein-ligand costructures is described based on NMR chemical shift perturbation (CSP) data routinely obtained using 2D 1H-15N HSQC spectra in high-throughput ligand affinity screens. The CSP data is used to both guide and filter AutoDock calculations using our AutoDockFilter program. This method is demonstrated for 19 distinct protein-ligand complexes where the docked conformers exhibited an average rmsd of 1.17 +/- 0.74 A relative to the original X-ray structures for the protein-ligand complexes.     

Modeling data from titration,amide H/D exchange,and mass spectrometry to obtain protein-ligand binding constants

We recently reported a new method for quantification of protein-ligand interaction by mass spectrometry, titration and H/D exchange (PLIMSTEX) for determining the binding stoichiometry and affinity of a wide range of protein-ligand interactions. Here we describe the method for analyzing the PLIMSTEX titration curves and evaluate the effect of various models on the precision and accuracy for determining binding constants using H/D exchange and a titration. The titration data were fitted using a 1:n protein:ligand sequential binding model, where n is the number of binding sites for the same ligand. An ordinary differential equation was used for the first time in calculating the free ligand concentration from the total ligand concentration. A nonlinear least squares regression method was applied to minimize the error between the calculated and the experimentally measured deuterium shift by varying the unknown parameters. A resampling method and second-order statistics were used to evaluate the uncertainties of the fitting parameters. The interaction of intestinal fatty-acid-binding protein (IFABP) with a fatty-acid carboxylate and that of calmodulin with Ca(2+) are used as two tests. The modeling process described here not only is a new tool for analyzing H/D exchange data acquired by ESI-MS, but also possesses novel aspects in modeling experimental titration data to determine the affinity of ligand binding.