HarmonyDOCK: The Structural Analysis of Poses in Protein-Ligand Docking

Molecular docking is a widely used method for lead optimization. However, docking tools often fail to predict how a ligand (the smaller molecule, such as a substrate or drug candidate) binds to a receptor (the accepting part of a protein). We present here the HarmonyDOCK, a novel method for assessing the docking software accuracy, and creating the scoring function which would determine consensus protein-ligand pose among those generated by available docking programs. Conformations for few hundred protein-ligand complexes with known three-dimensional structure were predicted on a benchmark set by set of different docking programs. On the basis of the derived ranking, the point of reference and the lower score limit were determined for subsequent investigations. The focus of the methodology is on the top-ranked poses, with the assumption being that the conformation of the docked molecules is the most accurate. We found out that some docking programs perform considerably better than the others, yet in all cases the proper selection of decoys, namely HarmonyDOCK, is needed for successful docking procedure.