An evolutionary-guided iterative refinement approach for protein multimers

Protein complexes play a central role in many cellular processes and the detection of protein complexes and their structures is crucial for understanding the role of protein complexes in the basic biology of organisms. Computational docking methods use structural and geometric search techniques and physico-chemical filters to model complex binding and rank computed structures according to energetic criteria using scoring functions. The results generated by such computational methods are expected to be low-energy structures that are similar to the native complex structures. Unfortunately, computational docking methods are often inaccurate [1] and need to be further refined in order to obtain native-like structures.