Virtual reality based approach to protein-protein docking problem

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1293747 (Table of Contents)

Proteins are large molecules that are vital for all living organisms and they are essential components of many industrial products. Protein-protein docking is the evaluation of binding of a protein to another via computer simulations. Many automated algorithms have been proposed to find docking configurations that might yield promising protein-protein complexes. However, these automated methods are likely to come up with false positives and have high computational costs. Consequently, Virtual Reality has been used to take advantage of user's experience on the problem. Haptic devices have been used for molecular docking problems; but they are inappropriate for protein-protein docking due to their workspace limitations and lack of sufficient information from force feedback. Instead of haptic rendering of forces, we provide two novel visual feedback methods for simulating physicochemical forces of proteins. We propose an interactive 3D application, DockPro, which enables domain experts to come up with dockings of protein-protein couples by using magnetic trackers and gloves in front of a large display.