MAGI-Dock: a PyMOL companion to Autodock Vina.

Abstract

Molecular docking simulation of small molecule drugs to macromolecules is valuable in structural biology and medicinal chemistry research. Its spread is supported by freely available software and databases. Like many resources in the free domain, docking software is command-line based, which comes to a limitation when defining the volume encompassing an active site, the so-called docking box. The box center and size, usually specified as cartesian coordinates, can be adjusted to correctly cover the active site only with a third-party molecular graphics program compatible with the docking input/output files, which reduces the choice to a few options. Moreover, the additional staff training may hamper the adoption of such software, e.g., in an enterprise environment. We exposed the functionality of Autodock and Autodock Vina into a graphical user interface extending upon that of PyMOL. Both the functionality of PyMOL and Autodock are merged, synergizing the capabilities of each program. To overcome such limitations, here we present MAGI-Dock. This graphical user interface combines the power of two of the most used free software for docking and graphics, Autodock Vina and PyMOL. MAGI-Dock is a free open-source software available under the GPL and can be downloaded from https://github.com/gjonwick/MAGI-Dock. The coupling of Autodock Vina with PyMOL through a graphical interface removes the molecular modeling limitations that come with Autodock. Therefore, MAGI-Dock could be conducive to lowering the learning curve for molecular docking simulation, with benefits for trainees in both academia and enterprise environments.