Basis for Accurate Protein pK_a Prediction with Machine Learning

pH regulates protein structures and the associated functions in many biological processes via protonation and deprotonation of ionizable side chains where the titration equilibria are determined by pK_a's. To accelerate pH-dependent molecular mechanism research in the life sciences or industrial protein and drug designs, fast and accurate pK_a prediction is crucial. Here we present a theoretical pK_a data set PHMD549, which was successfully applied to four distinct machine learning methods, including DeepKa, which was proposed in our previous work. To reach a valid comparison, EXP67S was selected as the test set. Encouragingly, DeepKa was improved significantly and outperforms other state-of-the-art methods, except for the constant-pH molecular dynamics, which was utilized to create PHMD549. More importantly, DeepKa reproduced experimental pK_a orders of acidic dyads in five enzyme catalytic sites. Apart from structural proteins, DeepKa was found applicable to intrinsically disordered peptides. Further, in combination with solvent exposures, it is revealed that DeepKa offers the most accurate prediction under the challenging circumstance that hydrogen bonding or salt bridge interaction is partly compensated by desolvation for a buried side chain. Finally, our benchmark data qualify PHMD549 and EXP67S as the basis for future developments of protein pK_a prediction tools driven by artificial intelligence. In addition, DeepKa built on PHMD549 has been proven an efficient protein pK_a predictor and thus can be applied immediately to, for example, pK_a database construction, protein design, drug discovery, and so on.