Exploring the potential of global protein-protein docking: an overview and critical assessment of current programs for automatic ab initio docking

Protein-protein docking is an important computational tool for studying protein-protein interactions. A variety of docking programs with different sampling algorithms and scoring functions as well as computational efficiencies have been subsequently developed over the last decades. Here, we have reviewed the trend and performance of current global docking programs through a comprehensive assessment of the 18 docking/scoring protocols of 14 global docking programs on the latest protein docking benchmark 4.0. The effects of docking algorithms, interaction types, and conformational changes on the docking performance were investigated and discussed. The findings are expected to provide a general guideline for the choice of an appropriate docking protocol and offer insights into the optimization and development of docking and scoring algorithms.