Effects of Water Models on Binding Affinity: Evidence from All-Atom Simulation of Binding of Tamiflu to A/H5N1 Neuraminidase

The influence of water models SPC, SPC/E, TIP3P, and TIP4P on ligand binding affinity is examined by calculating the binding free energy ΔG (bind) of oseltamivir carboxylate (Tamiflu) to the wild type of glycoprotein neuraminidase from the pandemic A/H5N1 virus. ΔG (bind) is estimated by the Molecular Mechanic-Poisson Boltzmann Surface Area method and all-atom simulations with different combinations of these aqueous models and four force fields AMBER99SB, CHARMM27, GROMOS96 43a1, and OPLS-AA/L. It is shown that there is no correlation between the binding free energy and the water density in the binding pocket in CHARMM. However, for three remaining force fields ΔG (bind) decays with increase of water density. SPC/E provides the lowest binding free energy for any force field, while the water effect is the most pronounced in CHARMM. In agreement with the popular GROMACS recommendation, the binding score obtained by combinations of AMBER-TIP3P, OPLS-TIP4P, and GROMOS-SPC is the most relevant to the experiments. For wild-type neuraminidase we have found that SPC is more suitable for CHARMM than TIP3P recommended by GROMACS for studying ligand binding. However, our study for three of its mutants reveals that TIP3P is presumably the best choice for CHARMM.