Pub3D is a 3D version of PubChem, in which we have generated a single conformer for 99% of PubChem using the smi23d suite of programs. The structures are then stored in a PostgreSQL database along with their distance moment shape descriptors described by Ballester and Graham-Richards. This allows us to perform shape similarity queries against a user supplied 3D structure. By partitioning the database (thanks to the CGL folks at IU) and using a spatial index, performance is quite snappy. (I had briefly mentioned this in a presentation at the ACS meeting, last spring).

The database had been down for some time, so today I got it back up and running and AJAX’ified the interface, to make it look a little nicer.  jQuery rocks! (OK, the color scheme sucks)

There are obvious drawbacks to the current database – single conformer shape search is not very rigorous, especially since the stored structures are not necessarily the minimum energy conformer. However, we have started generating multiple conformers, so hopefully we’ll address this issue in time. The bigger issue is how this approach to shape similarity compares to other well known approaches such as ROCS. Clearly, a shape descriptor approach is lower resolution to a volumetric approach such as ROCS, so in that sense the results are ‘rougher’. However visual inspection of some searches seems to indicate that it isn’t too bad. The paper describing these shape descriptors didn’t do a rigorous comparison – that’s on our TODO list.

OK, the fun part (a.k.a, coding) is done for now – got to get back to the paper.