PDB2PQR

** Use PDB2PQR web service directly instead of this tool **

As of 4/30/2020, the PDB2PQR web service from the National Biomedical Computation Resource (NBCR) has been discontinued. This Chimera tool will no longer work unless you have an older version of PDB2PQR locally installed on your own computer (it does not work with the current version) and then in this tool, you change the Executable location to Local and enter its location.

Instead, we recommend using the PDB2PQR web service at server.poissonboltzmann.org (directly, not from Chimera). The resulting PQR file can be opened in Chimera if you wish.

The PDB2PQR tool is an interface for running PDB2PQR, which prepares structures for further calculations by reconstructing missing atoms, adding hydrogens, assigning atomic charges and radii from specified force fields, and generating PQR files. Several of the force field options were developed specifically for Poisson-Boltzmann calculations, and thus, a primary use is to prepare structures for APBS (Adaptive Poisson-Boltzmann Solver). Users should cite:

PDB2PQR: expanding and upgrading automated preparation of biomolecular structures for molecular simulations. Dolinsky TJ, Czodrowski P, Li H, Nielsen JE, Jensen JH, Klebe G, Baker NA. Nucleic Acids Res. 2007 Jul;35(Web Server issue):W522-5.
PDB2PQR: an automated pipeline for the setup of Poisson-Boltzmann electrostatics calculations. Dolinsky TJ, Nielsen JE, McCammon JA, Baker NA. Nucleic Acids Res. 2004 Jul 1;32(Web Server issue):W665-7.

Results are opened as a new model in Chimera, with charge and radius attributes assigned to the atoms. ** Any residues not handled by the designated force field will be omitted. Conversely, any unwanted residues such as waters should be deleted beforehand to ensure they do not appear in the result. **

PDB2PQR and Dock Prep overlap in functionality, but only partially, and even the seemingly shared functions (e.g., repairing truncated sidechains, adding hydrogens) are done differently. It may be useful to run certain parts of Dock Prep beforehand, for example, to delete solvent. However, only the charge and radius assignments from PDB2PQR, not those from Chimera or other Chimera tools, can be written to a PQR file. See also: AddH, Add Charge, FindHBond, Coulombic Surface Coloring

There are several ways to start PDB2PQR, a tool in the Structure Editing category. It is also implemented as the command pdb2pqr.

Molecule - the structure of interest (choose from pulldown menu of models in Chimera)
Force field - source of charge and radius information; residues not handled by the designated force field will be omitted
- AMBER - AMBER ff99 (Wang, Cieplak, and Kollman, J Comput Chem 21:1049 (2000))
- CHARMM - CHARMM27 (MacKerell et al., J Phys Chem B 102:3586 (1998))
- PARSE (default) - PARameters for Solvation Energy (Sitkoff, Sharp, and Honig, J Phys Chem 98:1978 (1994) and Tang et al., J Mol Biol 366:1475 (2007))
- PEOEPB - a version of Gasteiger-Marsili Partial Equalization of Orbital Electronegativities, optimized for Poisson-Boltzmann calculations (Czodrowski et al., Proteins 65:424 (2006))
- SWANSON - AMBER ff99 charges with optimized radii (Swanson et al., J Chem Theory Comput. 3:170 (2007))
- TYL06 - a Poisson-Boltzmann-optimized force field (Tang, Yang, and Luo, J Phys Chem B 110:18680 (2006))
PQR output file (optional) - name and location of output PQR file; if not specified, a temporary name and location will be used.

Options (see the documentation at the PDB2PQR site for details):

Use PROPKA to predict protonation states (true/false) - whether to use PROPKA to predict the pKa values of ionizable groups in protein. Users should cite:
Improved treatment of ligands and coupling effects in empirical calculation and rationalization of pKa values. Søndergaard CR, Olsson MHM, Rostkowski M, Jensen JH. J Chem Theory Comput. 2011;7(7):2284-95.
Very fast empirical prediction and rationalization of protein pKa values. Li H, Robertson AD, Jensen JH. Proteins. 2005 Dec 1;61(4):704-21.
pH value to use with PROPKA (default 7.0) - set protonation states based on the PROPKA-predicted pKa values and the specified pH
Make protein N-terminus neutral (PARSE only) (true/false) - only available for the PARSE force field
Make protein C-terminus neutral (PARSE only) (true/false) - only available for the PARSE force field
Debump added atoms (true/false) - ensure that new atoms are not rebuilt too close to existing atoms
Optimize hydrogen bonds (true/false) - adjust hydrogen positions and flip certain sidechains (His, Asn, Glu) as needed to optimize hydrogen bonds
Hydrogen bond distance cutoff (default 3.4 Å)
Hydrogen bond angle cutoff (default 30.0°)
Report hydrogen bonds in Reply Log (true/false) - whether to send hydrogen bond information to the Reply Log
Assign charges to ligands (true/false) - use the PEOEPB approach (see above) to assign charges to any ligand residues, after protonation and conversion to Mol2 format (by Chimera) as currently required by the program; the residue(s) will be renamed LIG and placed in chain L
Display APBS control file in Reply Log (true/false) - whether to generate an example APBS input file and show it in the Reply Log; however, such a file is not needed for running the Chimera APBS tool

Executable location:

Opal web service (default)
- Server - URL of web service implemented using Opal; clicking Reset restores the URL for the NBCR service
Local
- Path - pathname of locally installed executable

OK initiates the calculation and dismisses the dialog, whereas Apply initiates the calculation without dismissing the dialog. The job will be run in the background; clicking the information icon

in the Chimera status line will bring up the Task Panel, in which the job can be canceled if desired. Close dismisses the dialog, and Help opens this manual page in a browser window.

The processed structure will be opened as a new model in Chimera, with charge and radius attributes assigned to the atoms.

UCSF Computer Graphics Laboratory / May 2021