On the rational design of substrate mimetics: the function of docking approaches for the prediction of protease specificities

The behaviour of substrate mimetics in mediating the acceptance of nonspecific acyl moieties by proteases has been investigated as a direct function of their site-specific ester leaving groups. In this contribution we report on a computational approach to rationalise this interplay and to predict the power of a potential ester moiety to act as a suitable substrate mimetic for a given enzyme by means of an automated docking procedure. Investigations with seven distinct substrate mimetics and two proteases, subtilisin and chymotrypsin, show a clear correlation between the theoretically calculated binding energies DeltaE and the specificity constants k(cat)KM(-1) obtained from parallel hydrolysis kinetic studies. These results prove the general function of the docking approach as a rational model not only in predicting the general acceptance of a substrate mimetic in a qualitative manner, but also to provide reliable information on its individual specificity towards proteases.