Effects of water models on binding affinity: evidence from all-atom simulation of binding of tamiflu to A/H5N1 neuraminidase.

The influence of water models SPC, SPC/E, TIP3P, and TIP4P on ligand binding affinity is examined by calculating the binding free energy ΔG(bind) of oseltamivir carboxylate (Tamiflu) to the wild type of glycoprotein neuraminidase from the pandemic A/H5N1 virus. ΔG(bind) is estimated by the Molecular Mechanic-Poisson Boltzmann Surface Area method and all-atom simulations with different combinations of these aqueous models and four force fields AMBER99SB, CHARMM27, GROMOS96 43a1, and OPLS-AA/L. It is shown that there is no correlation between the binding free energy and the water density in the binding pocket in CHARMM. However, for three remaining force fields ΔG(bind) decays with increase of water density. SPC/E provides the lowest binding free energy for any force field, while the water effect is the most pronounced in CHARMM. In agreement with the popular GROMACS recommendation, the binding score obtained by combinations of AMBER-TIP3P, OPLS-TIP4P, and GROMOS-SPC is the most relevant to the experiments. For wild-type neuraminidase we have found that SPC is more suitable for CHARMM than TIP3P recommended by GROMACS for studying ligand binding. However, our study for three of its mutants reveals that TIP3P is presumably the best choice for CHARMM.

Binding of glyco-acridine derivatives to lysozyme leads to inhibition of amyloid fibrillization.

While amyloid-related diseases are at the center of intense research efforts, no feasible cure is currently available for these diseases. The experimental and computational techniques were used to study the ability of glyco-acridines to prevent lysozyme amyloid fibrillization in vitro. Fluorescence spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy have shown that glyco-acridines inhibit amyloid aggregation of lysozyme; the inhibition efficiency characterized by the half-maximal inhibition concentration IC50 was affected by the structure and concentration of the derivative. We next investigated relationship between the binding affinity and the inhibitory activity of the compounds. The semiempirical quantum PM6-DH+ method provided a good correlation pointing to the importance of quantum effects on the binding of glyco-acridine derivatives to lysozyme. The contribution of linkers may be explained by the valence bond theory. Our data provide a basis for the development of new small molecule inhibitors effective in therapy of amyloid-related diseases.

Study of Tamiflu sensitivity to variants of A/H5N1 virus using different force fields.

An accurate estimation of binding free energy of a ligand to receptor ΔG(bind) is one of the most important problems in drug design. The success of solution of this problem is expected to depend on force fields used for modeling a ligand-receptor complex. In this paper, we consider the impact of four main force fields, AMBER99SB, CHARMM27, GROMOS96 43a1, and OPLS-AA/L, on the binding affinity of Oseltamivir carboxylate to the wild-type and Y252H, N294S, and H274Y mutants of glycoprotein neuraminidase from the pandemic A/H5N1 virus. Having used the molecular mechanic-Poisson-Boltzmann surface area method, we have shown that ΔG(bind), obtained by AMBER99SB, OPLS-AA/L, and CHARMM27, shows the high correlation with the available experimental data. They correctly capture the binding ranking Y252H → WT → N294S → H274Y observed in experiments (Collins, P. J. et al. Nature 2008, 453, 1258). In terms of absolute values of binding scores, results obtained by AMBER99SB are in the nearest range with experiments, while OPLS-AA/L, which is applied to study binding of Oseltamivir to the influenza virus for the first time, gives rather big negative values for ΔG(bind). GROMOS96 43a1 provides a lower correlation as it supports Oseltamivir to be more resistant to N294S than H274Y. Our study suggests that force fields have pronounced influence on theoretical estimations of binding free energy of a ligand to receptor. The effect of all-atom models on dynamics of the binding pocket as well as on the hydrogen-bond network between Oseltamivir and receptors is studied in detail. The hydrogen network, obtained by GROMOS, is weakest among four studied force fields.