Andreas Hildebrandt, Sergej Rjasanow, Ralf Blossey, Oliver Kohlbacher, and Hans-Peter Lenhof (2007)
Electrostatic potentials of proteins in water: a structured continuum approach
Bioinformatics 23(2):e99-e100.
Electrostatic interactions play a crucial role in many biomolecular processes,
including molecular recognition and binding. Biomolecular electrostatics is
modulated to a large extent by the water surounding the molecules.
Here, we present a novel approach to the computation of electrostatic potentials
which allows the inclusion of water structure into the classical theory
of continuum electrostatics. Based on our recent purely differential formulation
of nonlocal electrostatics (Hildebrandt et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 93} (2004) 108104)
we have developed a new algorithm for its efficient numerical
solution. The key component of this algorithm is a boundary element solver,
having the same computational complexity as established boundary element
methods for local continuum electrostatics.
This allows, for the first time, the computation of electrostatic potentials and interactions
of large biomolecular systems immersed in water including effects of the solvent's structure
in a continuum description. We illustrate the applicability of our approach with two examples,
the enzymes trypsin and acetylcholinesterase (AChE).
The approach is applicable to all problems requiring precise prediction of
electrostatic interactions in water, such as protein-ligand and protein-protein
docking, folding, and chromatin regulation. Initial results indicate that
this approach may shed a new light on biomolecular electrostatics and on aspects
of molecular recognition that classical local electrostatics cannot reveal.
Link to PubMed entry