MolSpace™
MolSpace™ is the collection of small molecule compounds at Silicos-it. MolSpace™ is build on top of a MySQL-based storage system in combination with the OpenBabel/Mychem database cartridge and the RDKit/Python toolkit for molecular processing. This section describes about how molecules are prepared and stored in the MolSpace™ system. In addition, interesting statistics are presented about the chemical structures that are stored in MolSpace™.
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Note
The molecules in MolSpace™ are for internal- and client-use only and cannot be shared due to contractual agreements with the vendors. Please contact the vendors individually if you would like to retrieve the molecules yourselves.
Cleaning up the molecules
In-silico representation of molecules within the context of chemoinformatics has always been a challenge due to the complex nature of chemical connectivity and how it can be represented by a computer. In particular, issues with tautomerisation, ionisation and aromaticity impose challenging approaches from the chemoinformatics tools and their users in order to be able to store, retrieve and manipulate chemical information in a high-throughput fashion.
In this context, the majority of the molecules contained within the collections of chemistry vendors need at least one or more particular cleaning steps in order to make them consistent in terms of their chemical constitution. Typical variations that have been observed in the chemical descriptions of molecules include:
- Distinct representations of identical salt forms
- For example, the hydrochloride salt is often represented in two different forms, the first one as [Cl-] and the other one as [Cl].
- Distinct tautomerisation representations of identical structures
- In many cases this comes back to the issue of different tautomeric forms, like is the case for the imidazolium structure which can be represented as [*]c1c[nH+]c[nH]1 or [*]c1c[nH]c[nH+]1.
- Ionised versus neutral forms of identical structures
- Many functional groups can be ionised at physiological pH and a uniform representation of these functional groups poses some additional issues as a consquence. For example, primary, secundary and tertiary amines are often stored in their ionised ([NH3+], [NH2+], [NH1+], respectively) or in the neutral form (N). Acidic groups, like carboxylic acids, can also be stored in their ionised (C(=O)[O-]) or neutral form (C(=O)O). With tetrazole as another example of an acidic group, the situation is even less consistent due to tautomerisation complexities ([*]c1nn[n-]n1 versus [*]c1nnn[n-]1 versus [*]c1nnn[nH]1).
- Unrecognised oxidation states
- The majority of the chemoinformatics toolkits have been designed to work with standard organic chemical molecules as such. In this respect, less common oxidation states are not recognised by the software. For example, RDKit only recognises the lowest oxydation state of chlorine (I), and therefore there is no suitable manner to store perchlorate in its correct SMILES representation, unless one falls back to the incorrect [Cl+3]([O-])([O-])([O-])[O-] representation. Another issue is P of which RDKit only recognizes oxidation state V (like in phosphoric acid H3PO4) but not state III, leading to the incorrect representation of trimethylphosphane as C[P+](C)C instead of CP(C)C.
It is important that the compounds are ‘as-clean-as-possible’ before storing them in the database. Molecules wth inconsistent connectivities, unrecognised atom types, wrong bond orders, and incompatible oxidation states could lead to significant delays in the post-screening analysis of the data results. The subsequent sections describe the subsequent cleaning steps that are performed on the molecules before these are stored in MolSpace™.
Desalting
Before storing in the MolSpace™ database, each molecule is desalted by separating the largest fragment of the molecule from the other fragments. The largest fragment is termed the core, and the remaining fargments are termed the salt. Within the context of this desalting process, the core is defined as the fragment having the largest number of non-hydrogen atoms. In situations with two or more largest fragments having an identical number of non-hydrogen atoms, additional selection criteria for the selection of the core fragment are first the fragment with the smallest number of bonds, second the fragment with the smallest molecular weight, and finally the fragment with the ‘smallest’ SMILES string according the string comparison algorithm as implemented in Python.
The desalting process involves separating each molecule in its fragments (if any), followed by separating the largest fragment from the others. Salts are simply stored in their SMILES notation and no further analysis like fingerprinting and charge neutralisation is performed on these fragments. The core is also stored in its SMILES notation, but additional properties are calculated from it for later retrieval.
Removing uncommon elements
After separating molecules in the core and salt parts, the next step in the cleaning process involves removing molecules of which the core contains at least one atom that is different than H, B, C, N, O, F, Si, P, S, Cl, Br or I:
Charge neutralisation
Since ionizable functions, like carboxylic acids and amines, can be represented either in their neutral or charged forms, it is important to introduce consistency by converting these groups into a single representation.
Within MolSpace™ the option has been taken to convert each molecule into its neutral form. Rules have been implemented to convert imidazoles, amines, carboxylic acids, thiols, sulfonamides, enamines, tetrazoles and sulfoxides into their neutral charge form. These rules have been incorporated using a SMARTS-based reaction scheme.
Removing remaining charges
In the last cleaning step, molecules carrying unwanted charges are removed. Not all charges are considered ‘unwanted’; the following figure shows some functional groups that are allowed:
Figure 1. Structures of charged functional groups that are allowed in MolSpace™.
