A fast empirical approach to binding free energy calculations based on protein interface information

Abstract

Three useful variables from the interfaces of 20 protein-protein complexes were investigated. These variables are the side-chain accessible number (Nb), the number of hydrophilic pairs (Npair) and buried apolar solvent-accessible surface areas (ΔASAapol). An empirical model based on the three variables was developed to describe the free energy of protein associations. As the results show, the side-chain accessible numbers characterize the loss of side-chain conformational entropy of protein interactions and the effective empirical function presented here has great capability for estimating the binding free energy. It was found that the variables of interface information capture most of the significant features of protein-protein association. Also, we applied the model based on the variables as a rescoring function to docking simulations and found that it has the potential to distinguish the 'true' binding mode. It is clear that the simple and empirical scale developed here is an attractive target function for calculating binding free energy for various biological processes to rational protein design.