Developing a Comparative Docking Protocol for the Prediction of Peptide Selectivity Profiles: Investigation of Potassium Channel Toxins

During the development of selective peptides against highly homologous targets, a reliable tool is sought that can predict information on both mechanisms of binding and relative affinities. These tools must first be tested on known profiles before application on novel therapeutic candidates. We therefore present a comparative docking protocol in HADDOCK using critical motifs, and use it to predict the various selectivity profiles of several major alpha KTX scorpion toxin families versus K(v)1.1, K(v)1.2 and K(v)1.3. By correlating results across toxins of similar profiles, a comprehensive set of functional residues can be identified. Reasonable models of channel-toxin interactions can be then drawn that are consistent with known affinity and mutagenesis. Without biological information on the interaction, HADDOCK reproduces mechanisms underlying the universal binding of alpha KTX-2 toxins, and K(v)1.3 selectivity of alpha KTX-3 toxins. The addition of constraints encouraging the critical lysine insertion confirms these findings, and gives analogous explanations for other families, including models of partial pore-block in alpha KTX-6. While qualitatively informative, the HADDOCK scoring function is not yet sufficient for accurate affinity-ranking. False minima in low-affinity complexes often resemble true binding in high-affinity complexes, despite steric/conformational penalties apparent from visual inspection. This contamination significantly complicates energetic analysis, although it is usually possible to obtain correct ranking via careful interpretation of binding-well characteristics and elimination of false positives. Aside from adaptations to the broader potassium channel family, we suggest that this strategy of comparative docking can be extended to other channels of interest with known structure, especially in cases where a critical motif exists to improve docking effectiveness.