Calculation of Second Virial Coefficients of Atomistic Proteins Using Fast Fourier Transform

Abstract

The second virial coefficient, B-2, measures a protein solution's deviation from ideal behavior. It is widely used to predict or explain solubility, crystallization condition, aggregation propensity, and critical temperature for liquid-liquid phase separation. B-2 is determined by the interaction energy between two protein molecules and, specifically, by the integration of the Mayer f-function in the relative configurational space (translation and rotation) of the two molecules. Simple theoretical models, such as one attributed to Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, and Overbeek (DLVO), can fit the dependence of B-2 on salt concentrations. However, model parameters derived often are physically unrealistic and hardly transferable from protein to protein. Previous B-2 calculations incorporating atomistic details were done with limited sampling in the configurational space, due to enormous computational cost. Our FMAP method, based on fast Fourier transform, can considerably accelerate such calculations, and here we adapt it to calculate B-2 values for proteins represented at the atomic level in implicit solvent. After tuning of a single parameter in the energy function, FMAPB2 predicts well the B-2 values for lysozyme and other proteins over wide ranges of solvent conditions (salt concentration, pH, and temperature). The method is available as a web server at http://pipe.rcc.fsu.edu/fmapb2.