A method is described to dock a ligand into a binding site in a protein on the basis of the complementarity of the intermolecular atomic contacts.
Docking is performed by maximization of a complementarity function that is dependent on atomic contact surface area and the chemical properties of
the contacting atoms. The generality and simplicity of the complementarity function ensure that a wide range of chemical structures can be handled.
The ligand and the protein are treated as rigid bodies, but displacement of a small number of residues lining the ligand binding site can be taken
into account. The method can assist in the design of improved ligands by indicating what changes in complementarity may occur as a result of the
substitution of an atom in the ligand. The capabilities of the method are demonstrated by application to 14 protein-ligand complexes of known
crystal structure.