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Cited by 7Enzyme Structure and FunctionComputational Drug Discovery MethodsAdvanced Electron Microscopy Techniques and Applications

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Ligand identification in CryoEM and X-ray maps using deep learning

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Karolczak, Jacek, Przybyłowska, Anna, Szewczyk, Konrad, Taisner, Witold, Heumann, John M, Stowell, Michael H B, Nowicki, Michał, Brzezinski, Dariusz·2024·Bioinformatics
DOI 10.1093/bioinformatics/btae749PMC PMC11709248

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Abstract

Motivation: Accurately identifying ligands plays a crucial role in the process of structure-guided drug design. Based on density maps from X-ray diffraction or cryogenic-sample electron microscopy (cryoEM), scientists verify whether small-molecule ligands bind to active sites of interest. However, the interpretation of density maps is challenging, and cognitive bias can sometimes mislead investigators into modeling fictitious compounds. Ligand identification can be aided by automatic methods, but existing approaches are available only for X-ray diffraction and are based on iterative fitting or feature-engineered machine learning rather than end-to-end deep learning. Results: Here, we propose to identify ligands using a deep-learning approach that treats density maps as 3D point clouds. We show that the proposed model is on par with existing machine learning methods for X-ray crystallography while also being applicable to cryoEM density maps. Our study demonstrates that electron density map fragments can aid the training of models that can later be applied to cryoEM structures but also highlights challenges associated with the standardization of electron microscopy maps and the quality assessment of cryoEM ligands. Availability and implementation: Code and model weights are available on GitHub at https://github.com/jkarolczak/ligands-classification. An accompanying ChimeraX bundle is available at https://github.com/wtaisner/chimerax-ligand-recognizer.

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Figure 1. Illustration of the density thresholding used for cryoEM maps. (A) The default voxel value distribution for PDB deposit 7SMR. The distribution is zero-inflated (almost 15 million voxels with values close to zero). (B) Voxel value distribution of 7SMR after the removal of values ±0.5 standard deviation around the median. The resulting distribution is much closer to normal and the quantile threshold is over two times higher.
Figure 1. Illustration of the density thresholding used for cryoEM maps. (A) The default voxel value distribution for PDB deposit 7SMR. The distribution is zero-inflated (almost 15 million voxels with values close to zero). (B) Voxel value distribution of 7SMR after the removal of values ±0.5 standard deviation around the median. The resulting distribution is much closer to normal and the quantile threshold is over two times higher.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 2. Schematic representation of the proposed ligand recognition pipeline. Example presenting the processing of a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide ligand from 2.10 Å cryoEM PDB deposit 8fuz (residue A 602). An initially selected fragment of a difference map (represented here at a 2.8σ threshold) is given a new density threshold based on reducing zero inflation and quantile thresholding. The map fragment is then resampled into a 0.2 Å grid, voxel values are rescaled, and the grid is transformed into a point cloud. From the point cloud, 2000 points are selected (using uniform maximum point selection) and fed into a deep learning model that outputs a list of ligand group scores.
Figure 2. Schematic representation of the proposed ligand recognition pipeline. Example presenting the processing of a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide ligand from 2.10 Å cryoEM PDB deposit 8fuz (residue A 602). An initially selected fragment of a difference map (represented here at a 2.8σ threshold) is given a new density threshold based on reducing zero inflation and quantile thresholding. The map fragment is then resampled into a 0.2 Å grid, voxel values are rescaled, and the grid is transformed into a point cloud. From the point cloud, 2000 points are selected (using uniform maximum point selection) and fed into a deep learning model that outputs a list of ligand group scores.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 3. Predictive performance of the analyzed machine learning models for X-ray (top panels), cryoEM (middle panels), and mixed (bottom panels) test sets of ligands. Each plot shows the mean ranks of the correct ligand (with error bars showing the standard error) versus (A, D, G) map resolution, (B, E, H) ligand fit quality (RSCC for X-ray, Q-score for cryoEM), and (C, F, I) size (number of nonhydrogen atoms) of the ligand. The corresponding ligand distributions are depicted as gray histograms, with ligand counts shown on the right y-axis.
Figure 3. Predictive performance of the analyzed machine learning models for X-ray (top panels), cryoEM (middle panels), and mixed (bottom panels) test sets of ligands. Each plot shows the mean ranks of the correct ligand (with error bars showing the standard error) versus (A, D, G) map resolution, (B, E, H) ligand fit quality (RSCC for X-ray, Q-score for cryoEM), and (C, F, I) size (number of nonhydrogen atoms) of the ligand. The corresponding ligand distributions are depicted as gray histograms, with ligand counts shown on the right y-axis.CC BY · PubMed Central
Figure 4. Examples of ligand identification using the proposed MinkLoc3Dv2 model. (A–D) Examples of correctly predicted X-ray ligands. (E) Uridine-5ʹ-diphosphate (UDP) misclassified as uridine (URI, black dashed frame). (F–I) Examples of correctly predicted cryoEM ligands. (J) Heme A (HEM) misclassified as a rare ligand due to incorrect density thresholding. Each ligand is labeled by its Chemical Component Dictionary ID, structure resolution, and (in parentheses) the PDB ID, chain, and residue number. X-ray diffraction ligands (A–E) shown in green mesh based on Fo–Fc maps contoured at 2.8σ calculated after removal of solvent and other small molecules (including the ligand) from the model. CryoEM ligands (F–J) depicted in pink mesh based on difference maps contoured according to the proposed automatic density thresholding method (13.642, 3.385, 17.997, 7.850, and 5.613 V for panels F–J, respectively). The white mesh in panel J shows a manually selected contour threshold of 11.000 V. Atomic coordinates were taken from the PDB deposits.
Figure 4. Examples of ligand identification using the proposed MinkLoc3Dv2 model. (A–D) Examples of correctly predicted X-ray ligands. (E) Uridine-5ʹ-diphosphate (UDP) misclassified as uridine (URI, black dashed frame). (F–I) Examples of correctly predicted cryoEM ligands. (J) Heme A (HEM) misclassified as a rare ligand due to incorrect density thresholding. Each ligand is labeled by its Chemical Component Dictionary ID, structure resolution, and (in parentheses) the PDB ID, chain, and residue number. X-ray diffraction ligands (A–E) shown in green mesh based on Fo–Fc maps contoured at 2.8σ calculated after removal of solvent and other small molecules (including the ligand) from the model. CryoEM ligands (F–J) depicted in pink mesh based on difference maps contoured according to the proposed automatic density thresholding method (13.642, 3.385, 17.997, 7.850, and 5.613 V for panels F–J, respectively). The white mesh in panel J shows a manually selected contour threshold of 11.000 V. Atomic coordinates were taken from the PDB deposits.CC BY · PubMed Central

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Citations

Cites

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Metadata

Authors
Karolczak, J., Przybyłowska, A., Szewczyk, K., Taisner, W., Heumann, J. M., Stowell, M. H. B., Nowicki, M., & Brzezinski, D.
Affiliations
  • Poznań University of Technology (PL)
  • University of Colorado Boulder (US)
  • Institute of Computing Science, Poznan University of Technology , Poznan 60-965,
ORCID
Venue
Bioinformatics
Publisher
Oxford University Press (OUP)
Published
2024-12-19
Volume
41
Issue
1
ISSN
  • 1367-4803 (ISSN-L)
  • 1367-4811
DOI
10.1093/bioinformatics/btae749
PMC
PMC11709248
OpenAlex
W4405596261
Cited by
7
References
3
Citations by year
2026: 3 · 2025: 4
FWCI
0.68
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • Bioinformatics (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) (acceptedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed Central (submittedVersion, cc-by)
Funders
NIH (AG061829, NS120496, U24-GM139174)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Structural Biology › Enzyme Structure and Function
  • Life Sciences › Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutics › Drug Discovery › Computational Drug Discovery Methods
  • Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Structural Biology › Advanced Electron Microscopy Techniques and Applications
Keywords
ligand identification, 3D point clouds, deep learning, ligand classification, structure-based drug design, map standardization

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