CompASM: an Amber-VMD alanine scanning mutagenesis plug-in

Alanine scanning mutagenesis (ASM) of protein–protein interfacial residues is a popular means to understand the structural and energetic characteristics of hot spots in protein complexes. In this work, we present a computational approach that allows performing such type of analysis based on the molecular mechanics/Poisson– Boltzmann surface area method. This computational approach has been used largely in the past and has proven to give reliable results in a wide range of complexes. However, the sequential preparation and manual submission of dozens of files has been often a major obstacle in using it. To overcome these limitations and turn this approach user-friendly, we have designed the plug-in CompASM (computational alanine scanning mutagenesis). This software has an easy-to-use graphical interface to prepare the input files, run the calculations, and analyze the final results. CompASM was built in TCL/TK programming language to be included in VMD as a plug-in. The CompASM package is distributed as an independent platform, with script code under the GNU Public License from http://compbiochem.org/Software/compasm/Home.html.