Binding Affinity Prediction Workflow - Simulation Input Files and Absolute Binding Free Energies

The Binding Affinity Prediction (BAP) workflow calculates absolute binding free energies for protein-ligand complexes by taking their crystal structures, converting them into input files for molecular dynamics (MD) simulations with GROMACS after they have passed extensive quality checks, and analysing the resulting trajectories with the Generalised Born model of implicit solvation as implemented in gmx_MMPBSA to obtain the free-energy estimates. The workflow was designed for soluble proteins without post-translational modifications, co-factors and non-standard amino acids, and it has limited support for coordinated ions.

For the dataset published here, the BAP workflow was run on the PDBbind 2020 (http://www.pdbbind.org.cn/index.php) refined set. This entry contains the MD simulation input files (BAPSimulationInputFiles.tar.gz) and the ABFE estimates (BAPBindingFreeEnergyEstimates.csv) obtained from four 250 ns trajectories for each complex. The MD simulations for more than 4000 complexes were run on the Leonardo supercomputer while the implicit-solvent calculations were carried out on Galileo, both operated by Cineca (Italy). The MD trajectories will be stored at Cineca for approx. 1 year after publication of this entry; contact Cineca's user support if you are interested in the trajectories.

The README file describes how to reproduce the MD trajectories and the subsequent implicit-solvent calculations yielding the free-energy estimates. The workflow scripts can be downloaded from GitHub (https://github.com/LigateProject/Binding-Affinity-Prediction-workflow). The MD simulations were run with GROMACS 2023.2 (https://manual.gromacs.org/2023.2/index.html), and the implicit-solvent calculations were carried out with gmx_MMPBSA 1.6.1 (https://valdes-tresanco-ms.github.io/gmx_MMPBSA/v1.6.1/).