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Complementarity at protein-ligand interfaces is observed in both electrostatic distributions (see above) and in three-dimensional shape. Shape complementarity has been quantified indirectly in terms of buried (solvent inaccessible) surface area[Chothia, 1976], gap volume[Jones & Thornton, 1995] and atomic packing density[Richards, 1974,Chothia & Janin, 1975,Hubbard & Argos, 1994]. Recently, more direct methods have been developed[Lawrence & Colman, 1993,Norel et al., 1994] which compare computer generated molecular surfaces. Many methods have been developed as part of docking algorithms which are described below.