More sophisticated is not always better: comparison of similarity measures for unsupervised learning of pathways in biomolecular simulations

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Hauptverfasser: Jäger, Miriam, Wolf, Steffen
Format: Preprint
Veröffentlicht: 2025
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author Jäger, Miriam
Wolf, Steffen
author_facet Jäger, Miriam
Wolf, Steffen
contents Finding process pathways in molecular simulations such as the unbinding paths of small molecule ligands from their binding sites at protein targets in a set of trajectories via unsupervised learning approaches requires the definition of a suitable similarity measure between trajectories. We here evaluate the performance of four such measures with varying degree of sophistication, i.e., Euclidean and Wasserstein distances, Procrustes analysis and dynamical time warping, when analyzing trajectory data from two different biased simulation driving protocols in the form of constant velocity constraint targeted MD and steered MD. In a streptavidin-biotin benchmark system with known ground truth clusters, Wasserstein distances yielded the best clustering performance, closely followed by Euclidean distances, both being the most computationally efficient similarity measures. In a more complex A2a receptor-inhibitor system, however, the simplest measure, i.e., Euclidean distances, was sufficient to reveal meaningful and interpretable clusters.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2507_01725
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle More sophisticated is not always better: comparison of similarity measures for unsupervised learning of pathways in biomolecular simulations
Jäger, Miriam
Wolf, Steffen
Soft Condensed Matter
Biological Physics
Computational Physics
Biomolecules
Finding process pathways in molecular simulations such as the unbinding paths of small molecule ligands from their binding sites at protein targets in a set of trajectories via unsupervised learning approaches requires the definition of a suitable similarity measure between trajectories. We here evaluate the performance of four such measures with varying degree of sophistication, i.e., Euclidean and Wasserstein distances, Procrustes analysis and dynamical time warping, when analyzing trajectory data from two different biased simulation driving protocols in the form of constant velocity constraint targeted MD and steered MD. In a streptavidin-biotin benchmark system with known ground truth clusters, Wasserstein distances yielded the best clustering performance, closely followed by Euclidean distances, both being the most computationally efficient similarity measures. In a more complex A2a receptor-inhibitor system, however, the simplest measure, i.e., Euclidean distances, was sufficient to reveal meaningful and interpretable clusters.
title More sophisticated is not always better: comparison of similarity measures for unsupervised learning of pathways in biomolecular simulations
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Biological Physics
Computational Physics
Biomolecules
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2507.01725