Systematic Assessment of the Effects of an All-Atom Force Field and the Implicit Solvent Model on the Refinement of NMR Structures with Subsets of Distance Restraints

摘要

Employment of a time consuming, sophisticated calculation using the all-atom force field and generalized- Born implicit solvent model (GBIS) for refinement of NMR structures has become practical through advances in computational methods and capacities. GBIS refinement improves the qualities of the resulting NMR structures with reduced computational times. However, the contribution of GBIS to NMR structures has not been sufficiently studied in a quantitative way. In this paper, we report the effects of GBIS on the refined NMR structures of ubiquitin (UBQ) and GB1 with subsets of distance restraints derived from experimental data. Random omission prepared a series of distance restraints 0.05, 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, and 0.7 times smaller. For each number, we produced five different restraints for statistical analysis. We then recalculated the NMR structures using CYANA software, followed by GBIS refinements using the AMBER package. GBIS improved both the precision and accuracy of all the structures, but to varied levels. The degrees of improvement were significant when the input restraints were insufficient. In particular, GBIS enabled GB1 to form an accurate structure even with distance restraints of 5%, revealing that the root-mean-square deviation was less than 1 Å from the X-ray backbone structure. We also showed that the efficiency of searching the conformational space was more important for finding accurate structures with the calculation of UBQ with 5% distance restraints than the number of conformations generated. Our data will provide a meaningful guideline to judge and compare the structural improvements by GBIS.