AtomicChargeCalculator: interactive web-based calculation of atomic charges in large biomolecular complexes and drug-like molecules

BACKGROUND: Partial atomic charges are a well-established concept, useful in understanding and modeling the chemical behavior of molecules, from simple compounds, to large biomolecular complexes with many reactive sites. RESULTS: This paper introduces AtomicChargeCalculator (ACC), a web-based application for the calculation and analysis of atomic charges which respond to changes in molecular conformation and chemical environment. ACC relies on an empirical method to rapidly compute atomic charges with accuracy comparable to quantum mechanical approaches. Due to its efficient implementation, ACC can handle any type of molecular system, regardless of size and chemical complexity, from drug-like molecules to biomacromolecular complexes with hundreds of thousands of atoms. ACC writes out atomic charges into common molecular structure files, and offers interactive facilities for statistical analysis and comparison of the results, in both tabular and graphical form. CONCLUSIONS: Due to high customizability and speed, easy streamlining and the unified platform for calculation and analysis, ACC caters to all fields of life sciences, from drug design to nanocarriers. ACC is freely available via the Internet at http://ncbr.muni.cz/ACC. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13321-015-0099-x) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.