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A new method to bridge the gap between ligand and receptor-based methods in virtual screening (VS) is presented. We introduce a structure-derived virtual ligand (VL) model as an extension to a previously published pseudo-ligand technique [1]: LIQUID [2] fuzzy pharmacophore virtual screening is combined with grid-based protein binding site predictions of PocketPicker [3]. This approach might help reduce bias introduced by manual selection of binding site residues and introduces pocket shape information to the VL. It allows for a combination of several protein structure models into a single "fuzzy" VL representation, which can be used to scan screening compound collections for ligand structures with a similar potential pharmacophore. PocketPicker employs an elaborate grid-based scanning procedure to determine buried cavities and depressions on the protein's surface. Potential binding sites are represented by clusters of grid probes characterizing the shape and accessibility of a cavity. A rule-based system is then applied to project reverse pharmacophore types onto the grid probes of a selected pocket. The pocket pharmacophore types are assigned depending on the properties and geometry of the protein residues surrounding the pocket with regard to their relative position towards the grid probes. LIQUID is used to cluster representative pocket probes by their pharmacophore types describing a fuzzy VL model. The VL is encoded in a correlation vector, which can then be compared to a database of pre-calculated ligand models. A retrospective screening using the fuzzy VL and several protein structures was evaluated by ten fold cross-validation with ROC-AUC and BEDROC metrics, obtaining a significant enrichment of actives. Future work will be devoted to prospective screening using a novel protein target of Helicobacter pylori and compounds from commercial providers.
The representation of small molecules as molecular graphs is a common technique in various fields of cheminformatics. This approach employs abstract descriptions of topology and properties for rapid analyses and comparison. Receptor-based methods in contrast mostly depend on more complex representations impeding simplified analysis and limiting the possibilities of property assignment. In this study we demonstrate that ligand-based methods can be applied to receptor-derived binding site analysis. We introduce the new method PocketGraph that translates representations of binding site volumes into linear graphs and enables the application of graph-based methods to the world of protein pockets. The method uses the PocketPicker algorithm for characterization of binding site volumes and employs a Growing Neural Gas procedure to derive graph representations of pocket topologies. Self-organizing map (SOM) projections revealed a limited number of pocket topologies. We argue that there is only a small set of pocket shapes realized in the known ligand-receptor complexes.
Background Identification and evaluation of surface binding-pockets and occluded cavities are initial steps in protein structure-based drug design. Characterizing the active site's shape as well as the distribution of surrounding residues plays an important role for a variety of applications such as automated ligand docking or in situ modeling. Comparing the shape similarity of binding site geometries of related proteins provides further insights into the mechanisms of ligand binding. Results We present PocketPicker, an automated grid-based technique for the prediction of protein binding pockets that specifies the shape of a potential binding-site with regard to its buriedness. The method was applied to a representative set of protein-ligand complexes and their corresponding apo-protein structures to evaluate the quality of binding-site predictions. The performance of the pocket detection routine was compared to results achieved with the existing methods CAST, LIGSITE, LIGSITEcs, PASS and SURFNET. Success rates PocketPicker were comparable to those of LIGSITEcs and outperformed the other tools. We introduce a descriptor that translates the arrangement of grid points delineating a detected binding-site into a correlation vector. We show that this shape descriptor is suited for comparative analyses of similar binding-site geometry by examining induced-fit phenomena in aldose reductase. This new method uses information derived from calculations of the buriedness of potential binding-sites. Conclusions The pocket prediction routine of PocketPicker is a useful tool for identification of potential protein binding-pockets. It produces a convenient representation of binding-site shapes including an intuitive description of their accessibility. The shape-descriptor for automated classification of binding-site geometries can be used as an additional tool complementing elaborate manual inspections.