Ligand Docking — Ligands Tab

Summary

Use the Ligands tab of the Ligand Docking panel to specify the source of ligands to be docked or scored, set size limits for skipping ligands, and optionally to change the settings for van der Waals radii scaling of nonpolar ligand atoms.

Ligands Tab Features

There are two sections in this tab:

Ligands to be docked Section

Use this section to specify the source of ligands to be docked (or scored in place), the partial charges to use, and to set size thresholds for skipping ligands.

For accurate docking, the ligands you specify must satisfy these four conditions:

  1. Ligands must be three-dimensional (3D) structures.
  2. Ligands must each consist of a single molecule with no covalent bonds to a receptor and no accompanying fragments such as counter ions or solvent molecules. Glide automatically skips fragmented ligands, e.g., salts with counterions present.
  3. Ligand files must be in Maestro SD, PDB, or MOL2 format. Ligand files in other formats can be converted by importing them into Maestro and exporting them in Maestro format. If you wish, you can specify a compressed Maestro file (.mae.gz or .maegz) or SD file (.sdf.gz or .sdfgz).
  4. Ligands must have all their hydrogens (filled valences). These can be added in Maestro using a toolbar button or a panel; see the Add Hydrogens - Advanced Panel topic.

Ligand preparation, for example using LigPrep, is strongly recommended before Glide ligand docking.

Glide automatically skips ligands containing unparametrized elements, e.g., tin, or atom types not supported by the OPLS force fields, such as explicit lone pair "atoms".

The Ligands to be docked section includes the following sets of options:

Use ligands from option menu

Choose the source of the ligands from this option menu, from the following options:

Use input partial charges option

Select this option to use partial charges from the input structures instead of those from the force field. This option enables you to use improved partial charges, for example from a Jaguar or a QM-Polarized Ligand Docking calculation.

Do not dock or score ligands with more than a atoms

This text box sets the maximum number of atoms a ligand structure may have if it is to be docked. Ligand structures in the input file that have more than the specified number of atoms will be skipped. The default (and maximum) is 500 atoms. You can reduce the maximum number of atoms a, if the active-site region is small and enclosed, to speed up a docking calculation on a large ligand database.

Do not dock or score ligands with more than r rotatable bonds

This text box sets the maximum number of rotatable bonds a ligand structure may have if it is to be docked flexibly. Ligand structures in the input file that have more than this number of rotatable bonds are skipped. The default (and maximum) number is 100 rotatable bonds. If only relatively small or rigid ligand "hits" are wanted, you can decrease the value of r. If you use torsional constraints, the rotatable bonds that are constrained are excluded from the number of rotatable bonds. The text box is not available if you have selected Refine or Score in place in the Settings tab.

Scaling of Van der Waals radii Section

Glide does not allow for flexible receptor docking. (For information about Glide/Prime Induced Fit docking, see the document Induced Fit Docking). However, successful docking sometimes requires that the ligand or the receptor "give" a bit in order to bind. To model this behavior, Glide can scale the van der Waals radii of nonpolar atoms (where nonpolar is defined by a partial charge threshold you can set), thereby decreasing penalties for close contacts. By default, scaling is performed for qualifying atoms in the ligand, but not those in the receptor. Ligand atom radii scaling settings can be changed using the options in this section.

To scale receptor atom radii, you must choose the appropriate options in the Receptor Tab of the Receptor Grid Generation panel prior to grid generation.

Scaling factor text box

The Scaling factor text box specifies the scaling factor. The default is 0.80. To turn van der Waals radii scaling off, set the scaling factor to 1.0. Full penalties for close contacts of nonpolar ligand atoms will then be used.

Partial charge cutoff text box

Scaling of vdW radii is performed only on nonpolar atoms, defined as those for which the absolute value of the partial atomic charge is less than or equal to the number in the text box. Since this is an absolute value, the number entered must be positive. The default for ligand atoms is 0.15.

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File: glide/dock_ligands.html
Last updated: 07 Jan 2015