Owen M McDougal, Nic Cornia, S V Sambasivarao, Andrew Remm, Chris Mallory, Julia Thom Oxford, C Mark Maupin, Tim Andersen
DockoMatic 2.0 is a powerful open source software program (downloadable from sourceforge.net) that allows users to utilize a readily accessible computational tool to explore biomolecules and their interactions. This manuscript describes a practical tutorial for use in the undergraduate curriculum that introduces students to macromolecular structure creation, ligand binding calculations, and visualization of docking results. A student procedure is provided that illustrates the use of DockoMatic to create a homology model for the amino propeptide region (223 amino acids with two disulfide bonds) of collagen α1 (XI), followed by molecular docking of the commercial drug Arixtra(®) to the homology model of α1 (XI), and finally, analysis of the results of the docking experiment...
March 2014: Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Education