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Updated: Jul 9, 2026

Incorporating Target Protein Structure Flexibility and Dynamics in Computational Drug Discovery Using Ensemble-Based Docking Analysis
Published on: June 20, 2025
A knowledge-based approach to generating diverse but energetically representative ensembles of ligand conformers
Roman J Dorfman1, Karl M Smith, Brian B Masek
1Tripos Informatics Research Center, 1699 S. Hanley Road, St. Louis, MO, 63144, USA.
Abstract:
This paper describes a new and efficient stochastic conformational sampling method for generating a range of low-energy molecule conformations. Sampling can be tailored to a specific structural domain (e.g., peptides) by extracting torsional profiles from specific datasets and subsequently applying them to target molecules outside the reference set. The programs that handle creation of the knowledge-based torsional profiles and conformer generation per se are separate and so can be used independently or sequentially, depending on the task at hand. The conformational ensembles produced are contrasted with those generated using local minimization approaches. They are also quantitatively compared with a broader range of techniques in terms of speed and the ability to reproduce bound ligand conformations found in complexes with proteins.
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