Computation of electrostatic complements to proteins: a case of charge stabilized binding

Recent evidence suggests that the net effect of electrostatics is generally to destabilize protein binding due to large desolvation penalties. A novel method for computing ligand-charge distributions that optimize the tradeoff between ligand desolvation penalty and favorable interactions with a binding site has been applied to a model for barnase. The result is a ligand-charge distribution with a favorable electrostatic contribution to binding due, in part, to ligand point charges whose direct interaction with the binding site is unfavorable, but which make strong intra-molecular interactions that are uncloaked on binding and thus act to lessen the ligand desolvation penalty.