Grafting of protein-protein binding sites

A strategy for grafting protein-protein binding sites is described. Firstly, key interaction residues at the interface of ligand protein to be grafted are identified and suitable positions in scaffold protein for grafting these key residues are sought. Secondly, the scaffold proteins are superposed onto the ligand protein based on the corresponding C-alpha and C-beta atoms. The complementarity between the scaffold protein and the receptor protein is evaluated and only matches with high score are accepted. The relative position between scaffold and receptor proteins is adjusted so that the interface has a reasonable packing density. Then the scaffold protein is mutated to corresponding residues in ligand protein at each candidate position. And the residues having bad steric contacts with the receptor proteins, or buried charged residues not involved in the formation of any salt bridge are mutated. Finally, the mutated scaffold protein in complex with receptor protein is co-minimized by Charmm. In addition, we deduce a scoring function to evaluate the affinity between mutated scaffold protein and receptor protein by statistical analysis of rigid binding data sets.