Free energy along drug-protein binding pathways interactively sampled in virtual reality
We describe a two-step approach for combining interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality (iMD-VR) with free energy (FE) calculation to explore the dynamics of biological processes at the molecular level. We refer to this combined approach as iMD-VR-FE. Stage one involves using a state-of-the-...
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Published in | Scientific reports Vol. 13; no. 1; p. 16665 |
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Main Authors | , , , , , |
Format | Journal Article |
Language | English |
Published |
England
Nature Publishing Group
04.10.2023
Nature Publishing Group UK Nature Portfolio |
Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | We describe a two-step approach for combining interactive molecular dynamics in virtual reality (iMD-VR) with free energy (FE) calculation to explore the dynamics of biological processes at the molecular level. We refer to this combined approach as iMD-VR-FE. Stage one involves using a state-of-the-art 'human-in-the-loop' iMD-VR framework to generate a diverse range of protein-ligand unbinding pathways, benefitting from the sophistication of human spatial and chemical intuition. Stage two involves using the iMD-VR-sampled pathways as initial guesses for defining a path-based reaction coordinate from which we can obtain a corresponding free energy profile using FE methods. To investigate the performance of the method, we apply iMD-VR-FE to investigate the unbinding of a benzamidine ligand from a trypsin protein. The binding free energy calculated using iMD-VR-FE is similar for each pathway, indicating internal consistency. Moreover, the resulting free energy profiles can distinguish energetic differences between pathways corresponding to various protein-ligand conformations (e.g., helping to identify pathways that are more favourable) and enable identification of metastable states along the pathways. The two-step iMD-VR-FE approach offers an intuitive way for researchers to test hypotheses for candidate pathways in biomolecular systems, quickly obtaining both qualitative and quantitative insight. |
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Bibliography: | ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 |
ISSN: | 2045-2322 2045-2322 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-023-43523-x |