A systematic study of low-resolution recognition in protein-protein complexes

A comprehensive nonredundant database of 475 cocrystallized protein-protein complexes was used to study low-resolution recognition, which was reported in earlier docking experiments with a small number of proteins. The dockin g program GRAMM was used to delete the atom-size structural details and sys tematically dock the resulting molecular images. The results reveal the exi stence of the low-resolution recognition in 52% of all complexes in the dat abase and in 76% of the 113 complexes with an interface area > 4,000 Angstr om(2). Limitations of the docking and analysis tools used in this study sug gest that the actual number of complexes with the low-resolution recognitio n is higher. However, the results already prove the existence of the low-re solution recognition on a broad scale.